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( OPVHI^MI M l 



ETERNALISM 



A THEORY OF INFINITE JUSTICE 



BY 



IS 



ORLANDO J. SMITH 




»•••*• \ z», ,» 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Cfce fiterjHbe J&re?& Cam&ri&ge 

1902 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies RtcEivED 

MAY. 19 1902 

COPVRIOHT ENTRY 

CLASS ^XXc. No. 
COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY ORLANDO J. SMITH 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published September) 7902 



PREFACE 

It is usually assumed that the individual is cre- 
ated at his birth by a Divine Power, or by the 
processes of Nature. And we cannot deny that 
some individuals are born good and others bad, 
and it seems to be impossible to reconcile with 
Infinite Justice the theory that one individual is 
created — " compelled to be " — with a noble char- 
acter, and another individual with a vicious charac- 
ter. 

Other questions must be answered. If God or 
Nature has created a criminal, can we acquit the 
Creator of all accountability for the criminal ? Has 
not the soul which is created vicious been deeply 
wronged? How can men be held to equal moral 
accountability if they have not been endowed in 
the beginning with equal goodness, equal strength, 
equal intelligence ? Are those who are born vicious 
.really the victims of the malice of Nature or of 
the wrath of God? 

I shall attempt herein to answer these and kin- 



iv PREFACE 

dred questions, and to prove that the Eternal Order 
can be and must be just and right. 

A small part of the matter in this volume is 
taken from a brochure published by me in 1899, 
entitled " A Short View of Great Questions." 

O. J. S. 

New York, 1902. 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

CREATION AND ANNIHILATION ARE UNKNOWN TO 
SCIENCE 

PAGE 

I. Agnosticism, the Theory that no one can know ... 3 
II. Materialism, the Theory that Death ends all ... . 6 

III. Materialistic Fatalism : Man is the Beneficiary of Na- 

ture's Bounty, or the Victim of her Malice .... 9 

IV. The Theological Theory, that Man is made by a Cre- 

ator 12 

V. Theological Fatalism : all Men are under the Favor or 

Curse of the Creator 16 

VT. Justice cannot be built upon a Foundation of Injustice . 20 
VII. Science knows nothing of Creation or of Annihilation . 25 
VIII. The Theory of Eternalism — Man builds his own Char- 
acter 28 

IX. A World without Evil would be as Toil without Ex- 
ertion, as a Battle with no Antagonist 30 

X. The Problem of Heredity — God or Nature has not 

created a vicious Man 34 

XI. Man's Accountability — Suicide cannot kill him ; Death 

cannot destroy him 37 

XII. Man is his own Savior and Creator, and makes his own 

Heaven and Hell 39 



PART n 

THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 

I. Our Life here is as a broken Part of a much broader 

Life 45 

II. The contradictory Definitions of the Word Religion . . 49 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

III. The true Definition will be found in instinctive and per- 

manent Belief ' 55 

IV. The Survival of the Soul is an instinctive and a perma- 

nent religious Doctrine 60 

V. The Belief in the Accountability of the Soul is also 

instinctive and permanent 67 

VI. The Belief in God — the War between Naturalism and 

Supernaturalism 72 

VII. The Meaning of the two fundamental religious Beliefs . 74 
VIII. Eternal Justice is the actual meaning of Religion ... 77 
IX. A Harmony in the Definitions of Religion — its Perver- 
sions — its Origin 81 

X. The Meaning of the Belief in God — inherited Theology 

— Supernaturalism 84 

XI. It is not well to scorn the moral Results of human Ex- 
perience 89 

PART III 

FATALISM 

I. That which Theology calls Predestination, Philosophy 

names Necessity — both Terms mean Fatalism . . 95 
II. All Forms of Fatalism are based on the Assumption 

that Man's Character is made for him 99 

III. The Law of Causation — the Answer of Eternalism to 

Fatalism 106 

IV. Mm as a Pen that writes, as a Trumpet that talks . . 108 
V. The Failure of the Efforts to reconcile Fatalism with 

moral Accountability Ill 

VI. Morality is secondary in Theology, while Philosophy 

hat not v.-t decided what Morality is 120 

VII. Materialism and Morality — " the cosmic Process has 

no Sori of Relation to mora] Ends" 124 

VIII. Science demonstrates that some arc born vicious and 

Others good — the Pica of the Degenerate .... 136 
IX. Tin- [nsignifioanoe of Man — "a Chalk-mark on the 

Blackboard of Time " 142 

\ Thfl Dogma Of Fatalism belittles and enslaves Mankind 14o 



CONTENTS vii 

PAGE 

XI. The Decay of Theology and Philosophy — our Poets are 

our clearest Thinkers 149 

XII. There is no Error in the instinctive Logic and Philoso- 
phy of Mankind 153 

PART IV 

NATURAL JUSTICE 

L Each Day is a Day of Judgment — Justice is Compen- 
sation, Reciprocity, Equilibrium 161 

II. Justice involves a Cycle of Cause, Development, and 

Effect 166 

III. Nothing exists without Compensation — the Key of all 

Truth 171 

IV. Justice is the basic Verity, the fundamental Law, the 

divine Principle 175 

PART V 

ETERNALISM 

I. An Answer to the Materialist — a Demonstration of Pre- 

existence 181 

II. The Theory of Creation is as the Darkness of Night ; 

the Theory of Eternalism as the Light of Day . . . 185 

III. Theories concerning the Reincarnation of Souls . . .190 

IV. Why have we no Memory of our past Lives ? . . . . 196 
V. The Universe is Man's Heritage, Man's Arena, Man's 

Throne 199 

VI. To each Soul all Good is accessible, and all Evil possible 204 
VII. Eternalism — a Faith based on Reason and Understand- 
ing ... 207 

PART VI 

ANSWERS TO CRITICS 

I. All Theories denying Preexistence are Theories of Cre- 

ationism and Fatalism 217 



viii CONTENTS 

FAGS 

II. Religion" and the Sense of Justice — the Perversions of 

Religion 221 

III. The Theory of Divine Love and Mercy — Naturalism 

against Supernaturalism 226 

IV. Accountability to Law — the Caterpillar and Butterfly 

— other Criticisms 236 

V. The Question of Memory — conscious Immortality a 

Thing to be earned 250 

VI. The Difficulties in accepting and expressing the Logic 

of Fatalism 256 

VII. The Decay of Western Philosophy — the true and im- 
perishable Philosophy 259 

VJJLL. Agnosticism — the Evidences of the After-life, of Pre- 

existence, of the moral Order of the Universe . . . 264 
IX. An Examination of the one Theory of Infinite Justice 

offered by Creationism 274 



APPENDIX 

Pojt.ts, Philosophers, and other Thinkers on Eternal- 
ism 287 

Index 311 



PART I 

CREATION AND ANNIHILATION ARE 
UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 



The world was never made. 

It will change, but it will not fade. 

So let the wind range, 

For even and morn 

Ever will be 

Through eternity. 
Nothing was born ; 
Nothing will die ; 
All things will change. 

Tennyson. 



AGNOSTICISM, THE THEORY THAT NO ONE CAN 
KNOW 

DESIRING to discuss the immortality of the 
soul, with kindred questions, I am met in 
the beginning by the Agnostic theory that knowledge 
bearing on the subject is unobtainable. 

The position " I do not know " is a modest one. 
Every man must take it in relation to many things, 
for " our knowledge is as the rivulet, our ignorance 
as the sea." But the extension of the statement " I 
do not know " by the Agnostic to " I cannot know ; 
no one knows ; no one can know" does not bear the 
impress of humility. It has the appearance rather 
of an indirect form of denial, a method of changing 
the grounds of discussion, a challenge to human 
intelligence. 

Man has always struggled to comprehend the 
meaning of his existence. He has been undiscour- 
aged by countless failures. Beaten in one field of 
exploration, he turns with undiminished hope and 
courage to another. He refuses to accept a denial 
of the possibility of knowledge. He says to the 
Agnostic : 



f- 



4 ETERNALISM 

" How do you know that no one can know ? You 
do not explain ; you do not answer ; you only deny. 

" Upon what basis do you set a limit to human 
knowledge — not alone to your own knowledge, or to 
the knowledge of all who are now living, but to the 
knowledge of all who may yet live ? 

" When you say that ' no one can know,' you 
assert by implication that there is no evidence bear- 
ing on the subject ; for knowledge cannot be denied 
where evidence exists. 

11 Here are two conflicting theories — one that the 
soul of man is immortal ; the other that it is not. 
Is it likely that an inquiry would prove one theory 
to be exactly as reasonable, or as unreasonable, as 
the other ? 

" The true theory must have more evidence to sup- 
port it than the false one, the truth being stronger 
than that which is untrue. 

" You ask us to dismiss the subject. We cannot 
dismiss it. Primitive man could not ; the half-civil- 
ized could not, and no more can enlightened man. 
And the Agnostics cannot dismiss it ; for, having 
denied all possibility of knowledge and ended discus- 
sion, they continue to lecture and to write about it." 

In a time within the memory of men now living, 
the theory of evolution had made little impression 
even upon scientific men, and not any upon mankind 
in general The physical origin of the human race 
was still undemonstratecL 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 5 

When Darwin wrote his immortal demonstration, 
Agnosticism was unknown. Darwin was impelled, 
however, in the introduction to his " Descent of 
Man," to dispose in these words of the " no one can 
know " theory, which is doubtless as old as the 
thought of man : 

" It has often and confidently been asserted that man's 
origin can never be known ; but ignorance more frequently 
begets confidence than does knowledge ; it is those who 
know little, and not those who know much, who so posi- 
tively assert that this or that problem will never be solved 
by science." 

We now understand, through the labors of Dar- 
win and others, the physical origin of the race of 
men. 

If we would advance in our investigation of the 
still more important problem of the wherefore of 
the soul of man, we should deal promptly with essen- 
tials, rather than with non-essentials. 



II 



MATERIALISM, THE THEORY THAT DEATH 
ENDS ALL 

TWO common views are held, in Europe and in 
America, regarding the past and future of the 
soul of man — the materialistic view and the theo- 
logical view. Reduced to its simplest terms, this is 
the theory of Materialism : 

The existence of the individual begins with the 
birth, and ends with the death, of his body. 

The philosophy of Materialism may be expressed 
as follows : 

" The individual is born without his own consent 
— the product of Heredity and of other causes of 
which he has no knowledge — and is equipped with 
physical, mental, and moral qualities for which he is 
not responsible. 

u All that the individual knows is that he is here ; 
that he is what he is. Why he is here, why he is 
what he is, he does not and cannot know." 

But man must ask questions. He must, for exam- 
ple, inquire concerning the law of Heredity, upon 
which is based the claim that the dull and the 
depraved inherit the follies and suffer for the vices 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 7 

of their forefathers. How can this theory be recon- 
ciled with moral accountability or with justice? 
Why should the individual be condemned for the 
sins of his fathers ? 

We do not tolerate a code that punishes one man 
for the wrong done by another. Can it be that man 
is just, and that the Eternal Order is unjust ? 

The Materialist would doubtless answer : 

" Even if there were no law of Heredity, your 
questions would remain unanswered ; for, since the 
individual does not create himself, he is not account- 
able for the qualities born in him. 

" Nature, for reasons which we cannot compre- 
hend, or perhaps for lack of reason, produces crea- 
tures that are unequal — some being men, some 
beasts, some reptiles. Of the men, some are wise 
and some are foolish, some good and some bad." 

Then man must ask more questions. If Nature 
has created one brave and another cowardly, one 
wise and another foolish, one good and another 
vicious, why should the wise reproach the foolish, 
or the good the bad, or the hero scorn the coward ? 
Is creation a lottery, in which some creatures draw 
prizes and others blanks ? 

We may assume that the Materialist would an- 
swer in these words : 

" But why do you question me ? I am not the 
Creative Force. I only face the facts, and decline 
to cherish illusions. If I have stated the facts in- 



8 ETERNALISM 

correctly, please correct me. If I have stated them 
correctly, then you, who question their justice, should 
account for them. 

"If you cannot answer them, then accept them 
and make the best of them. If they overthrow some 
of your most sacred idols and theories, so much the 
worse for your idols and theories. 

"The sheep does not complain because it is a 
sheep, nor the snake because it is a snake. Perhaps 
it would be wise for us to congratulate ourselves 
that we are no worse than we are, and make the best 
of what we are, rather than lament because some 
creatures have been treated unfairly in the distribu- 
tion of Nature's favors." 



Ill 

MATERIALISTIC FATALISM : MAN IS THE BENE- 
FICIARY OF NATURE'S BOUNTY, OR THE VIC- 
TIM OF HER MALICE 

IT is now evident that the theory of Materialism 
is the doctrine of Fatalism, which can be in- 
. terpreted as follows : 

" We are men ; we know not why. That we are 
men is due to no merit of our own. 

" The good are only the beneficiaries of Nature's 
bounty, and the evil are the victims of her malice. 

M That we are not monkeys or rats or snakes is 
due to our good luck alone. 

" We had no part in our creation ; we shall not 
be consulted about our extinction. ) A few years ago 
/ we were not ; a few years hence we shallnot be. ,~ 
" If we are discontented, we can depart of our own 
will and without fear ; for there can be no conse- 
quences oi self-destruction. He who finds life unde- 
sirable is foolish to suffer here, when he can go 
hence to eternal sleep. 



" * If you would not this poor life fulfill, 
Lo, you are free to end it when you will, 
Without the fear of waking" after death.' 



<& 



10 ETERNALISM 

" Courage, truthfulness, honor, and wisdom are the 
gifts of Nature, for which he who possesses them 
deserves no more credit than the apple for its flavor, 
or the rose for its fragrance. 

" The noblest thought of Plato is not his thought ; 
it is the result of the forces which Nature planted in 
the skull of Plato. 

" Nature propagates intellectual and moral quali- 
ties as she grows potatoes, and vicious impulses as 
she produces thistles. The good and evil in us 
belong to Nature, who planted them. 

" We are only the garden pots with which she 
indulges her fancy for the cultivation of man. In 
one pot she plants a seed which produces a hero, in 
another a poet, in another a thinker, in another a 
savior ; and other seeds planted in other pots pro- 
duce fools, traitors, liars, thieves. 

" Our noblest, brightest, and best are as the prize 
roses in the flower show ; our meanest are as the 
weeds by the wayside, or as the noxious growths in 
the swamps of the tropics. 

" What merit we have is due to Nature's favor ; 
our demerit to her neglect." 

If the theory of Materialism be true, we must 
indeed part with the idols and ideals which we have 
most cherished. We must cease building monuments 
to the good and noble. 

If it be true, we must pluek from our hearts all 
reverence for the great teachers, thinkers, disco v- 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 11 

erers, and heroes of the earth, for we owe them no 
respect ; they were only the fortunate ones in the 
lottery of Fate. 

If it be true, we can condemn no cowards, fools, 
or criminals, for they are the wretched victims of 
Nature's malevolence, and as such are entitled to 
our sympathy — if Nature has endowed us with such 
a quality as sympathy. 

If it be true, we must admit that moral accounta- 
bility is a fiction, and that equity has no place in the 
Eternal Order, 

If it be true, our theories of eternal justice are 
dreams and illusions. Nature negatives them all. 
Man reaps what he has not sown, ^nd sows what he 
shall not reap. 

Materialism is a dismal and hopeless philosophy, 
which sends a chill to our heart-strings, turns the 
sweet things of life into bitterness, and destroys the 
charts and extinguishes the lights by which we have 
been guided. 

And yet the Materialist is right in at least one 
position — his propositions should be answered, rather 
than merely questioned or denied. 



IV 

THE THEOLOGICAL THEORY, THAT MAN IS 
MADE BY A CREATOR 

THE theory of Theology concerning the soul of 
man is expressed briefly as follows : 
The individual is created at his birth, an im- 
mortal soul, who survives the death of his body. 

This theory differs from the theory of Materialism 
in two particulars: First, in the assumption that 
the individual is created by God rather than by 
Nature ; and, second, that man is endowed with im- 
mortality. 

The theological theory — that the individual has 
been created by God — is also a doctrine of Fatal- 
ism. Man remains a creature that has been made ; 
and the credit or responsibility for what he is rests 
with the Maker, and not with the thing made. Man 
is still but a pot in which the Great Gardener has 
planted a seed of good or of evil. 

[ndeed, the law of Heredity is distinctly asserted 

in die Second Commandment (Exodus xx. 5) : " For 

I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the 

• iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the 

M&ird and fourth generation of them that hate me." 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 13 

A few of the many other texts' touching the 
creation and final disposal of man, aiid the fatalistic 
relation of the Creator to man, ire here repro- 
duced : 

Genesis ii. 7 : 

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; 
and man became a living soul. 

Ephesians i. 11 : 

In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being 
predestinated according to the purpose of him who work- 
eth all things after the counsel of his own will. 

Proverbs xvi. 4 : 

The Lord hath made all things for himself : yea, even <--*— 
the wicked for the day of evil. 

Acts xv. 18 : 

Known unto God are all his works from the begin- 
ning of the world. 

Proverbs xv. 3 : 

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding 
the evil and the good. 

Isaiah xlv. 5, 7 : 

I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the 
light and create darkness: I make peace, and create \ 
evil : I the Lord do all these things. 

Romans ix. 11, 13, 15, 16, 18 : 

(For the children being not yet born, neither having 
done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according 
to election might stand, not of works, but of him that call- 



14 ETERNALISM 

eth.) As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have 
I hated. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on 
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on 
whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him 
that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that 
sheweth mercy. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he 
will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. 

Romans viii. 30 : 

Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also 
called : and whom he called, them he also justified : and 
whom he justified, them he also glorified. 

Timothy i. 9 : 

Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, 
not according to our works, but according to his own pur- 
pose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before 
the world began. 

Ephesians ii. 8, 9 : 

For by grace are ye saved through faith ; and that not 
of yourselves : it is the gift of God — not of works, lest 
any man should boast. 

Romans ix. 21, 22 : 

Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same 
lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto 
dishonor? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and 
to make 1 lis power known, endured with much long-suf- 
fering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction ? 

Daniel iv. 34, 35 : 

I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored 

him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting 

dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to gener- 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 15 

ation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed 
as nothing : and he doeth according to his will in the army 
of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth : and 
none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest 
thou? 

Psalm cxxxv. 6 : 

Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, 
and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places. 

Matthew x. 29-81 : 

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? And one 
of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. 
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 

Psalm xciv. 8—11 : 

Understand, ye brutish among the people : and ye fools, 
when will ye be wise ? He that planted the ear, shall he 
not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? 
He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct ? He 
that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know ? 

Romans xi. 7 : 

What then ? Israel hath not obtained that which he 
seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the 
rest were blinded (according as it is written, God hath 
given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should 
not see, and ears that they should not hear) unto this day. 



THEOLOGICAL FATALISM : ALL MEN ARE UNDER 
THE FAVOR OR CURSE OF THE CREATOR 

ORTHODOX theologians agree in affirming the 
all-presence, all-wisdom, and all-power of a 
Creative God ; that he sees all things, knows all 
things, wills all things ; that /the creature is power- 
less against the Creator ; that man is an instrument 
of his Maker. 

Upon this line of reasoning has been built the 
most absolute form of Fatalism that the wit of man 
can conceive — the doctrine of Predestination — 
which was until recent centuries accepted by all of the 
churches, though against the protest of an earnest 
minority. It yet remains in the creeds of the sects 
which hold the Westminster Confession of Faith, in 
which it is expressed in these words : 

" By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his 
glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlast- 
ing life and others foreordained to everlasting death. 

"These angels and men thus predestinated and fore- 
ordained arc particularly and unchangeably designed, and 
their number is bo certain and definite that it cannot be 

either increased Or diminished. 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 17 

" The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to 
the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he 
extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as he pleaseth, for the 
glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by 
and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sins, 
to the praise of his glorious justice." 

The doctrine of Predestination is the logical and 
inevitable deduction from the theory of a Creative 
God, against whose will nothing can happen, who is 
all-powerful and is personally cognizant of all that 
is and will be. 

But the sense of justice in the hearts of nearly all 
men revolts against every phase of Fatalism. The 
larger bodies of the church long ago abandoned the 
doctrine of Predestination. It is now a dying dogma. 

And yet the denial that the final disposition of the 
'souls of men has been predetermined by the Creator 
leaves equally serious questions unexplained ; for it 
is evident, if the Creative theory be true, that the 
Creator has already either blessed or damned all of 
his creatures in the very act of creating them. 

If the Creative theory be true, man is of necessity, 
from the first breath he draws, — for no merit or 
demerit of his own, — under the favor or the wrath 
of the Creator. 

If it be true, then some men are created strong, 
brave, wise, honest, and righteous ; some receive the 
gift of genius, of beauty, of fair-mindedness, of inno- 
cence, of honor ; and these are under the favor and 
blessing of the Creator. 



18 ETERNALISM 

If it be true, then others are created ignorant, 
cruel, corrupt, selfish, cowardly, and base ; some 
receive the gift of dullness, of selfishness, of mean- 
ness, of indolence, of ugliness, of savagery, of 
depravity; and these are under the curse of the 
Creator. 

Justice requires that man shall earn what he gets, 
and shall not get what he does not earn; that he 
shall reap as he sows, and not reap what another has 
sown ; that he shall suffer for his own sin, and not 
for the sin of another. 

In one creature the Creator, if we accept the 
theory of Theology, has planted good. This good 
the creature has not earned. It is the gift of man's 
Maker. 

In another creature the Creator, in accordance 
with the same theory, has planted evil. This evil 
the creature has not earned. It is the curse of man's 
Maker. 

The doctrine that all men sinned in Adam is at 
war with justice. If we assume that a creature can 
sin against the will of his Creator and Ruler, then 
Adam's sin was his own, and he alone could justly 
pay its penalty. But if man did sin in Adam, then 
man should pay the penalty. Hence the atonement, 
by which man's responsibility is shifted, is also at 
war with justice. 

The doctrine that salvation cannot be earned 
through a moral life alone, which has perplexed so 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 19 

many minds, now becomes plain. The individual 
cannot, under the Creative hypothesis, be saved by 
his own merits, for he has none. His merits belong 
to his Maker, who gave them. 

Man's demerits also, under the Creative theory, 
belong to his Maker ; and the justice of this claim 
is crudely recognized in the granting of easy terms 
of salvation. Repentance and faith are the essential 
theological factors in salvation. Repentance is easy, 
and especially so to one in trouble. Faith is easy also 
to one who can accept the theory, often advanced, 
that reason need not enter into faith. 

Theology has failed in its prolonged efforts to 
reconcile the doctrine of Fatalism, or of the creation 
of the individual, with justice and morality. Such a 
reconciliation is impossible. No system of justice or 
morality can be built upon the theory that we are, 
from our birth, and for no merit or demerit of our 
own, either the beneficiaries of God's bounty or the 
victims of his wrath. 



VI 



JUSTICE CANNOT BE BUILT UPON A FOUNDA- 
TION OF INJUSTICE 

MATERIALISM and Theology are in agree- 
ment to this extent — that the individual is 
created. The Materialist believes that man's char- 
acter is made for him by the processes of Nature ; 
and the theologian holds that man's character is 
made for him by the act of a Creative God. 

We have now reached the heart of the main diffi- 
culty in all theological and philosophical thought — 
the riddle which has puzzled, confused, and baffled 
every reasoning mind that has approached it from 
the standpoint of Creationism. Millions have dis- 
cussed the question in books, pamphlets, sermons, 
lectures. The foremost thinkers in Christendom 
have sought for light on the subject, and have 
failed. The issue, when cleared of the complications 
and entanglements with which learning and authority 
have sought fruitlessly to explain, evade, or bury it, 
is as follows: I low can the responsibility for the 
(food and ceil in the individual who is created be 
transferred from the Creator to his creature? 

Can we even say that the thing that is manufac- 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 21 

tured, compounded, is either moral or immoral? 
The lotion that changes agony into peace, the pre- 
scription that saves a life, are not moral ; nor is a 
poisonous compound immoral. Morality and immo- 
rality exist in the maker and designer only, and not 
in the thing made or designed. 

If the individual is created, then he can think 
only such thoughts as his Maker has given him the 
power to think, and do only the things which his 
Maker has given him the power to do. His thoughts 
and acts are therefore not his own ; they are the 
thoughts and acts of his Maker. 

It will be said in answer, by the theologian, that 
all men have been given freedom by their Maker to 
choose between good and evil. Does the Maker 
grant to the one created deaf, freedom to hear ? Or 
to the one created blind, freedom to see ? Or can 
the one created morally deaf be free to hear, or the 
one created morally blind be free to see ? " Can the 
Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? " 
Must not each created soul act in harmony with the 
nature or character that has been given to it by its 
Maker ? 

Some men, it is true, have the inclination, will, or 
power to improve their moral condition. But if man 
is created, this inclination, will, or power is the en- 
dowment given to him by his Maker. 

Other men have an inclination toward evil, and 
are mentally or morally weak. This tendency and 



22 ETERNALISM 

weakness are also, in accordance with the Creative 
theory, the gifts of man's Maker. 

If man has been created, his will, his ambitions, 
his aspirations, are all the gifts of his Maker ; and 
his weakness of will, his lack of aspiration or ambi- 
tion, his mean-spiritedness, are also conferred upon 
him by his Maker. He can be nothing more or less 
than what he is made to be. 

Moreover, the man who has been created vicious 
has been wronged beyond all our knowledge of 
wrong in its darkest aspect. 

Our conception of the worst forms of wrong may 
be found in the basest manifestations of hate, cru- 
elty, lust, ingratitude, treachery. But these iniquities 
and atrocities pale in comparison with the deeper 
and blacker wrong done by a Creative Power which 
could place the stain of crime, the stamp of de- 
bauchery, the brand of dishonor, upon a helpless 
human soul, which, if it could have had a choice, 
might have been innocent, noble, and good. 

It is a significant fact, on the other hand, that 
mankind have coined the correct meaning of the 
word u creature," in the sense of one who has re- 
ceived unearned fortune, position, or honors at the 
hands of another, and is subject to the will, or is 
the instrument or tool, of this patron or creator. 
The word " creature," used with this meaning, as 
when Macaulay ipeaks of Charles I. "and his crea- 
ture, Laud," » s a term of scorn and contempt. 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 23 

Nor can this word have in justice any other mean- 
ing, when applied to men who owe all that they have 
or are to power, patronage, or favor. And it must 
be so applied to our noblest, wisest, and best, if they 
have been created noble, wise, and good, without 
merit, or even choice, of their own. 

He who honors any man for his wisdom or good- 
ness, or scorns another for being dull or vile, repudi- 
ates both Materialism and Theology. For, if either 
the theory of Materialism or of Theology be true, no 
man deserves the least praise or blame for what he 
is. The man created good is as a good engine or 
machine, reflecting credit upon his Maker ; and the 
man created bad is as an imperfect machine, a dan- 
gerous engine, or a poisonous compound, reflecting 
discredit upon his Maker. 

Justice cannot be built upon a foundation of injus- 
tice, nor can morality be built upon a foundation of 
immorality. If God or Nature has created one soul 
good and another bad, then God or Nature has been 
unjust. If God or Nature has created a vicious, 
base, or depraved creature, then God or Nature has 
been immoral. 

If a Creative Force has made all men as they are, 
then the truth that man speaks is the Creator's truth, 
and the lie that man utters is the Creator's lie ; the 
honor in man is the Creator's honor, and the crime 
of man is the Creator's crime. 

Man, at his worst or best, if his character is made 



24 ETERNALISM 

for him, is but the impotent and soulless expression 
of the Creator's varying moods, and all moral dis- 
tinctions vanish from the world. 

Fortunately, however, Creationism is not the only 
possible theory of the origin of the soul of the indi- 
vidual. 



vn 

SCIENCE KNOWS NOTHING OF CREATION OR OF 
ANNIHILATION 

THE whole theory of Creation — the creation of 
the Universe, of the race of men, of the soul 
of the individual — is at variance with the trend, 
deductions, and demonstrations of modern science. 

Fire, decay, and other forces can change, but do 
not annihilate, matter. Neither can matter be cre- 
ated ; it is, so far as science knows, eternal. Force, 
also, so far as science knows, and the essential prop- 
erties in all things by rational inference, are unbe- 
atable, indestructible, eternal. 

There is on record no evidence of a change in the 
laws of Nature. It is reasonable to assume that there 
has been and will be no change in them. Nature's 
ways are large ways. Her great forces, we are com- 
pelled to believe, could not have been set to work in 
some dim, far-off time, as an engine starts the wheels 
of a factory. 

Huxley, in "Essays Upon Some Controverted 
Questions," says : " But science knows nothing of 
any stage in which the Universe could be said, in 
other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be 



26 ETERNALISM 

formless or empty, or in any respect less the seat of 
law and order than it is now." 

Herbert Spencer closes an epitome of the cardinal 
principles of his philosophy with these words : a That 
which persists unchanging in quantity, but ever 
changing in form, under these sensible appearances 
which the Universe presents to us, ... we are 
obliged to recognize as without limit in space and 
without beginning or end in time." 

We can conceive of no time when Nothing was, 
and Something was not. The word Nothing ex- 
presses only a negation. It has no place, no habita- 
tion, no real existence. 

The theory of Creationism — so far as it applies to 
the Universe, to matter and force — has no stand- 
ing now among scientific and philosophical thinkers. 
They believe that the Universe has not been created, 
and will not be destroyed — that matter and force 
are uncreatable and indestructible, and that the order 
of Nature is changeless. 

Nothing is created, nothing destroyed — and yet 
the way of Nature is transformation, unceasing 
change. No thing stands still for an instant ; not 
even the granite rock. There is nothing new in the 
constitution of any thing — nothing that did not 
exist before its incipience, and that will not survive 
its dissolution. 

Creation, in its basic sense, — the making of some- 
thing out of nothing, — is, so far as science knows, 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 27 

impossible. Annihilation — the reduction of some- 
thing to nothing — is also unknown to science. 

The processes of evolution, of building and fashion- 
ing, are not creations. A house is not created — 
the essence and substance of all things used in build- 
ing a house being uncreatable. Nor can a house be 
annihilated, its matter being indestructible. 

What we loosely call Creation and Annihilation 
are really Transformations. That which to our eyes 
is made or born anew is old matter, old force, old 
thought, old spirit, old love, old hate, old honor, old 
degradation, in new forms. 

The order of Nature, so far as we are able to com- 
prehend it, has no contradictions. Its ways and facts 
are harmonious. The Universe, matter, force, and 
the essence of all things being immortal and eternal, 
then the soul of man, which is the essence of man, 
must also be immortal and eternal. 

The flesh in which we see man must be only as a 
garment worn for a time. There must be a process 
of growth, of evolution, for the mind, character, or 
soul, as well as for the physical body, of the indi- 
vidual. The soul must have developed through 
evolution from antecedents that are eternal. 

Man is the flower of this earth. It is unbelievable 
that God or Nature would give eternal life to a 
senseless speck of dust, and deny it to the soul of 
man. 



VIII 

THE THEORY OF ETERNALISM — MAN BUILDS 
HIS OWN CHARACTER 

FROM the propositions in the preceding chapter 
I draw the following deductions, which are the 
foundation stones of the theory of Eternalism, which 
I shall herein defend : — 

1. The Universe has in space no boundary ; in 
time no beginning and no end. 

2. There is no creation and no annihilation — 
the essential properties of all things being unbeat- 
able and indestructible. Birth and death, growth 
and decay, are transformations. 

3. Tlie soul of the individual, which is the essence 
of the individual, is uncreatable and indestructible, 
preexistent and after-existent, immortal and eter- 
nal. 

The theory of Eternalism, in its relation to the 
individual, is the completion and the rounding out of 
the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. That 
which lias a beginning must have also an end. If 
man's soul came into existence with the birth of his 
body, it must die with the death of his body. "That 
which originates in time perishes in time," says 
Romany. 

On the other hand, that which has no ending can 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 29 

have had no beginning. The theory that immortal- 
ity exists after death only is evidently but a half- 
truth. That which is immortal has forever existed. 

Building upon the theory that the soul of man is 
beginningless and deathless, Eternalism teaches that 
the Eternal Order is just to the last degree — that 
man builds his own character — that we are sick 
because we have neglected the laws of health ; igno- 
rant because we have failed to improve our opportuni- 
ties ; fretful, despondent, lazy, or cowardly because we 
have cultivated mean-spiritedness ; boasters, drunk- 
ards, ingrates, thieves, liars, or murderers because 
we have dishonored ourselves — that we reap as we 
have sown — that each one is what he has made him- 
self in his previous existence — that man is forever 
working out his own damnation, or his own salvation 
— that he may rise to divine altitudes, or fall to the 
level of the reptile or the insect. 

It is in harmony with the theory of Eternalism 
also to say that man is free, subject to the limita- 
tions of his own character, which the individual has 
made and can modify in freedom, and subject also 
to the order of Nature which, as I shall attempt to 
show, is just — that the form of each being shows 
what its life has been ; its strength and goodness 
are medals of honor for its victories ; its weakness 
and vileness are the badges of defeat — that man's 
life is an endless battle in which the good and brave 
are victorious, and the mean and cowardly are de- 
feated. 






IX 



A WORLD WITHOUT EVIL WOULD BE AS TOIL 
WITHOUT EXERTION, AS A BATTLE WITH NO 
ANTAGONIST 

EVIL, the problem which has baffled the Crea- 
tionists, becomes explicable under the theory 
of Eternalism. Evil exists in the balance of natu- 
ral forces. It is the penalty of wandering from 
right ways. It is also the background of good, the 
incentive to good, and the trial of good, without 
which good could not be. 

As the virtue of courage could not exist without 
the evil of danger, and as the virtue of sympathy 
could not exist without the evil of suffering, so no 
other virtue could exist without its corresponding 
evil. 

In a world without evil — if such a world be 
really conceivable — all men would have perfect 
health, perfect intelligence, and perfect morals. No 
one could gain or impart information, each one's cup 
of knowledge being full. The temperature would 
stand forever at seventy degrees, both heat and cold 
being evil. There could be no progress, since prog- 
ress is the overcoming of evil. 

A world without evil would be as toil without 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 31 

exertion, as light without darkness, as a battle with 
no antagonist. It would be a world without mean- 
ing. 

A man without eyes could see no evil, and with- 
out his other senses could hear, taste, smell, feel, and 
know none. But so emasculated, he would be a clod, 
not a man. Who would give up even one of his 
senses to escape the evil that it opens to him ? 

The law of averages indicates that what is called 
chance, or luck, is manifest in a superficial and tem- 
porary sense only, and that in the deeper and more 
permanent sense there is no such thing as hazard in 
the natural world. 

So true is this, that the important business of 
insurance is built upon the sound assumption that 
fires, accidents, marine disasters, and even death 
itself, will always bear a definite ratio to time, num- 
bers, and other factors. 

Through the working of this law of averages, we 
can conceive that the individual in his eternal life — 
assuming the preexistence and after-existence of the 
soul — passes through all forms of experience possi- 
ble to human beings ; and that he benefits and suf- 
fers, impartially with his fellows, from all kinds of 
good and evil fortune ; and hence that he receives 
no injustice in the distribution of Nature's frowns 
and favors. 

High souls do not get trouble enough. Nature's 
average allotment of difficulties does not satisfy 



32 ETERNALISM 

them. They seek, rather than avoid, risks, trials, 
and dangers. In fiction and history, and in the life 
about us, those characters are the most interesting 
who have gone successfully through the most trouble. 
No man commands our admiration if he be not a 
conqueror of difficulties. 

Why should we not have happiness without effort ? 
Because we should not have earned it. Nature is an 
inexorable creditor. We must pay for what we get, 
and pay in full. 

A man loses his sight by a stroke of lightning ; 
he is not responsible for the thunderbolt, and could 
not have escaped it by prudence or foresight. What 
consolation has he for this affliction which he could 
not have avoided? The consolation that his loss will 
be temporary, that his sight will be restored in his 
after-life. He should look upon his misfortune as 
merely an incident of his eternal life, in which adver- 
sity, as well as prosperity, has its uses and its com- 
pensations. 

What is commonly called good fortune is not 
always really good ; nor is bad fortune always really 
evil. Back of good fortune lurks sometimes an evil 
influence, and back of evil fortune a good influence. 

Adverse fortune may strengthen a man's unselfish- 
ness, fortitude, and courage ; while good fortune may 
weaken some of his nobler qualities, as great riches 
may develop idleness or vanity, and as inherited 
privileges may foster self-love, arrogance, and con- 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 33 

tempt for one's kind. The heir to a throne, seen 
by the lights which illuminate the eternal life, may 
really be more unfortunate than he who is born to 
poverty and toil. 

Many evils, such as pestilence and famine, which 
were formerly considered manifestations of the wrath 
of God, are now known to be the results of man's 
ignorance. Science can overcome pestilence, and 
provide the antidote for germs of disease. Pru- 
dence, foresight, and cooperation, combined with 
human thought, in the practical form of railroads 
and steamships, can relieve the horrors of famine. 

Accidents, difficulties, burdens, and sorrows are 
tests of our manhood, trials of our worthiness, with- 
out which the soul would shrivel for lack of exercise. 

All forces work to make strong men, high men, 
real men. The post of hardship and danger is a 
post of honor. 

" For as gold is tried by fire, 
So a heart must be tried by pain." 



THE PROBLEM OF HEREDITY — GOD OR NATURE 
HAS NOT CREATED A VICIOUS MAN 

HEREDITY, in the light of the theory of the 
preexistence of the soul, becomes an illustra- 
tion of the justice, and not of the injustice, of the 
natural order. 

To vicious parents a vicious child is born. The 
child is not created ; its soid is as old as are the 
souls of its parents. Its sins are its own. Its 
character has been formed in its previous existence. 

It is as correct to say that the sins of the child 
are visited upon the parents, as that the sins of the 
parents are visited upon their offspring. 

The child comes from space, to be for a short time 
a citizen of this earth. It is attracted by its own 
kind. Vicious itself, it naturally becomes the off- 
spring of vice. So also the ignorant soul is born to 
dull lineage, the wise soul to wise ancestry, the good 
soul to good antecedents. 

It is just that parents should beget children of 

the same nature as themselves, and that children 
should be begotten by their own kind. The chil- 
dren are as mirrors in which the parents can see 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 35 

themselves, and in the parents the children are re- 
flected. And thus both parents and children are 
rewarded for the good and punished for the evil in 
their own characters. 

Building upon the theory of the eternal existence 
of the soul, we perceive that God or Nature has not 
created a vicious man — that the vicious man is 
self -developed — that he can place the responsibility 
nowhere but upon himself — that the strong have 
made themselves strong, and that the weak are 
responsible for their own weakness. 

The dreams of perfect equality here or hereafter 
are apparently baseless. Some men will always be 
taller, stronger, or better than their fellows. No two 
men can be exactly equal in all things. The fit 
advance ; the unfit decline. If the law were reversed, 
the Universe would be a hell in which health and 
wisdom would be exterminated by disease and folly. 

We perceive also that the future of the individual 
is not predetermined ; for it is of necessity undeter- 
mined, since man — under the theory of the com- 
plete immortality of the soul — makes his own future, 
as he has made his present and his past. 

If it be true that our lives are predetermined, 
then we are as actors, speaking the lines and simulat- 
ing the emotions in an unending drama which Fate 
writes for us — loving or hating, fighting or yield- 
ing, speaking wisdom or folly, acting nobly or igno- 
bly, as the iron law of Necessity gives us our com- 



36 ETERNALISM 

pulsory parts — a theory which is in harmony with 
Creationism, and at war with Eternalism. 

Nor can we admit, under the theory of eternal life 
for the individual, that salvation is free ; nor that it 
can be secured on easy terms ; nor secured on any 
terms in the sense of being held against all danger 
of being lost. Salvation can be maintained only 
— under this theory of justice — and only through 
eternal vigilance. 



XI 



MAN'S ACCOUNTABILITY — SUICIDE CANNOT 
KILL HIM ; DEATH CANNOT DESTROY HIM 

ETEENALISM confirms the doctrine of moral 
accountability in declaring that man is and 
will be what he makes himself. His follies and vices 
are his own ; his strength and goodness are his own. 

From the awful responsibility for himself he can- 
not escape. Suicide cannot kill him ; death cannot 
destroy him. No ritual, ceremony, fasting, confes- 
sion, or repentance ; no imploration, prostration, or 
sacrifice to the Gods ; no mediation, no form of faith, 
can save him. He has no friend at court ; no attor- 
ney can appear for him. 

The Law works silently, constantly ; it is a stran- 
ger to pity, mercy, love, or hate ; it knows only Jus- 
tice — Justice to the finest degree, as exact as arith- 
metic, as the movements of the stars, as the order of 
the Universe. 

Man's systems of justice are feeble compared with 
Nature's, as is shown in our temperance laws, which 
are often impotent ; while Nature's statutes against 
drunkenness are enforced to the letter. Poverty, 
degradation, insanity, and death are penalties for the 
violation of Nature's prohibitory laws. 



38 ETERNALISM 

Our own system of government is a reflection ap- 
parently of eternal justice. The state gives to each 
man freedom, equal rights, and equal opportunities ; 
but it can force no one to use his freedom, his 
rights, or his opportunities. The use or misuse of 
his civil rights rests with man. 

So it is with his eternal rights. If the Eternal 
Order were to force man to use or to neglect his 
eternal rights, it would destroy his freedom, and 
consequently his morality, which is dependent upon 
his freedom to choose between good and evil. 

The Law is accurate, steadfast, fair, and just. If 
anything so absolute as the Eternal Order can be 
said to have a purpose in relation to men, it is to 
make them happy. Unhappiness is usually the pen- 
alty of man's own errors. 



XII 

MAN IS HIS OWN SAVIOR AND CREATOR, AND 
MAKES HIS OWN HEAVEN AND HELL 

UNDER the theory of the eternal existence of 
the individual, we perceive that the human 
form, however humble or even degraded, still con- 
fers a certain stamp of nobility. We are at least 
men ; not " dumb, driven cattle." Opportunity is 
ours ; knowledge is ours, if we would grasp it ; and 
happiness is ours, if in ignorance we do not refuse it. 

The greatest things in this world are not its 
rivers, lakes, and mountains ; not its forests, plains, 
and palaces. None of these can see, feel, or love ; 
none can think, aspire, or dare. 

Man — who can conquer the forests and plains, 
who can build palaces, who can read the stars and 
suns, who can taste of both pain and joy — is the 
noblest object in this world. The raggedest child 
in London is greater than St. Paul's ; the poorest 
peasant in France is nobler than the tallest peak of 
the Alps. 

Man need not grovel or abase himself. He is 
older than Rome, older than the Pyramids, older 
than the Koran and the Bible, older than any book 



40 ETERNALISM 

ever written or printed; and he will survive them 
all. 

Man is the eternal master of himself ; a king of a 
royal line older than any throne or dynasty. The 
noble man has a noble kingdom ; it extends as far 
and wide as his thought and love can reach. 

The base man has a mean kingdom ; but, if he so 
wills, he can broaden it, better it. He can lose it 
only through his own abdication ; for in all the 
Universe he has no real enemy but himself. 

Man is his own savior and creator, and makes his 
own heaven and hell. 

Heaven and hell are real. They are always with 
us, and follow us through all experiences. Now, and 
every day of our lives, we must choose between them. 
We can accept either, scorn either. 

Hell is in the neglecting of opportunities, and in 
descending among the vile and slothful ; in descend- 
ing so low that opportunity may cease, and hope die, 
and intelligence be lost. The deeper hell can be seen 
about us, in the lower animals ; in beings dull, slimy, 
creeping, insignificant, loathsome. 

Heaven is in the improving of opportunities, and 
in ascending to the level of the wise and good. It 
is visible to us in bodies sound, strong, and clean — 
in muscles that can stand a strain — in organs that 
can resist disease — in eyes that can drink beauty — 
in cars attuned to music — in minds that can reason 
unci understand, appreciative of noble thoughts and 



CREATION IS UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE 41 

deeds, eager for wisdom, hospitable to truth, scornful 
of lies — in moral natures set to the Golden Rule, 
kindly, cheerful, generous, loving, and just ; in cour- 
age, true ; in honor, bright. 



PART II 

THE ACTUAL MEANING OF KELIGION 



OUR LIFE HERE IS AS A BROKEN PART OF A 
MUCH BROADER LIFE 

IN seeking for the rational explanation of Religion, 
and for the secret of its extraordinary hold upon 
mankind, this important fact should be considered : 
The life of the individual in this world alone — in 
that phase of existence which is bounded by birth as 
a beginning and by death as an end — is usually 
incomplete, and apparently more or less unjust. 

Some enter the life here well endowed in body, 
mind, and morals, while others are poorly equipped 
in one or all. 

A few live long and pleasant lives, into which 
enters no unusual trouble, pain, or misfortune. The 
lives of the many are short and broken, or ren- 
dered burdensome by slavish toil; "by griefs that 
gnaw deep, by woes that are hard to bear." Story 
pictures them, in his "Hymn of the Conquered," 
as — 

. . . " the low and the humble, the weary and broken in heart, 
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate 

part ; 
Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes burned 

in ashes away, 



46 ETERNALISM 

From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who 

stood at the dying of day, 
With the work of their life all around them, unpitied, unheeded, 

alone, 
With death swooping down o'er their failure, and all hut their 

faith overthrown." 

Nor are the good always happy, nor the vicious 
wretched, in proportion to their deserts in this life. 
To the contrary, the good are often wretched, and 
the vicious happy. 

The life here is as one act in a play, or one chap- 
ter in a novel, in which the plot has neither opening 
nor conclusion, and in which the action, separated 
from the preceding and succeeding parts, is appar- 
ently without purpose, sense, or justice — in which 
wrong and villainy may be triumphant, and integrity 
and virtue trampled in the dust. 

Perhaps our passion for fiction and the drama is 
due to the fact that in them we find that complete- 
ness and justice which we see rarely in real life. In 
them the good, after many difficulties and troubles, 
are triumphant, and the evil are finally undone. 

Our fondness for biography and history — which 
abound also in rewards, retributions, and other equi- 
ties — can be explained on similar grounds. 

We discover that completeness and justice come 
to the individual slowly, but surely, in a historic 
sense —that those made great by accident are in 
time forgotten — that the tyrannical and the cruel 
are detested — that Columbus left a better legacy 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 47 

than Caesar — that Shakespeare is more honored 
than any English king — that Burns, the rustic poet, 
is better loved than Bonaparte, the conqueror. 

We observe that Lincoln — whose youth was for- 
lorn, whose life was full of care, who was assassi- 
nated in the hour of his triumph — still lives, and 
will continue to live, enshrined in the hearts of his 
countrymen. 

And we learn to believe that the books of Nature 
must balance — that Time glorifies the just, humili- 
ates the arrogant, levels all inequalities, revenges all 
outrages, rights all wrongs. 

Thus we find in both fact and fiction, and in the 
hunger for justice in our own hearts, some warrant 
for our faith that the present life is only a broken 
part of a much broader life which will be complete, 
and in which all things will be made right and even. 

If this life were broken into still shorter frag- 
ments, it would appear to be still more unjust. If, 
for illustration, each life consisted of one day only, 
then the lives of some would fall upon fair, mild, or 
brilliant days, and others upon wet, cold, or hot days ; 
some upon the long days of June, and others upon 
the short days of December ; and some upon days 
into which no sunlight would enter, and these would 
doubt even the existence of the sun. 

But our life here consists of many days, and we 
know that the good days outnumber the bad ones ; 
that the seasons return with precision, and that there 



48 ETERNALISM 

are but slight variations in the annual rainfall and 
temperature of any given district. , 

A week or even a month of bad days does not dis- 
courage us, for we know that in the round of a year 
we shall have about so much of rain and drought, 
sunshine and fog, heat and cold. So far as the 
weather is concerned, Nature's average restores ap- 
proximate equilibrium in the cycle of one year, and 
complete balance in a term of years. 

The broader the basis of reckoning, the more 
perfect is the result established by statistics and 
experience. While we have in our present life 
manifestations of perfect justice in the alternations 
of the weather, in the recurrence of the seasons, and 
in many other phenomena, and while a tendency 
toward justice is evident in all human affairs, it is 
clear that the life here is neither long enough nor 
broad enough to establish complete equity. 

A full consideration of the subject leads to the 
conclusion that, if death ends all, then the mass of 
mankind must live, toil, suffer, and die under a con- 
dition of hopeless injustice — and hence that the only 
basis for the belief that justice will be completely 
established in human affairs is in the doctrine of the 
immortality of the soul. 

This conclusion sheds much light upon the origin, 
universality, persistence, and rational meaning of 
Religion. 



II 

THE CONTRADICTORY DEFINITIONS OF THE 
WORD RELIGION 

RELIGION is a word which has not been clearly- 
defined. It has one meaning to Jews, an- 
other to Christians, another to Mohammedans, an- 
other to Buddhists. 

Even the Christians — being divided into many- 
sects — hold views more or less in conflict concerning 
religious truth. 

The lexicographers have defined the word timidly 
and haltingly, drawing no clear distinction between 
Religion and Theology. 

Benjamin Kidd, in his " Social Evolution," after 
assuming that an inhabitant of another planet who 
is visiting this earth desires to investigate our Reli- 
gion, says : 

" He would find everywhere discussions on the subject 
of Religion. Besides an immense theological literature, 
exclusively devoted to the matter, he would encounter the 
term at every turn in the philosophical and social writings 
of the time. He would find a vast number of treatises, 
and innumerable shorter works and articles in periodical 
publications, devoted to discussions connected with the 
subject and to almost every aspect of the great number 



50 ETERNALISM 

of questions more or less intimately associated with it. 
But for one thing he would search in vain. He would 
probably be unable anywhere to discover any satisfactory 
definition of this term ' Religion ' which all the writers 
are so constantly using, or any general evidence that those 
who carried on the discussions had any definite view as to 
the function in our social development of the beliefs they 
disputed about, if, indeed, they considered it necessary to 
hold that they had any function at all. 

" He would probably find, at a very early stage, that 
all the authorities could not possibly intend the word in 
the same sense." 

The confusion in the varying conceptions of the 
meaning of the word Religion is apparent in the fol- 
lowing descriptions, characterizations, and defini- 
tions : 

Webster's Dictionary : 

The outward act or form by which men indicate their 
recognition of the existence of a God or of Gods having 
power over their destiny, to whom obedience, service, and 
honor are due ; the feeling or expression of human love, 
fear or awe of some superhuman and overruling power ; 
... a system of faith and worship. 

Century Dictionary : 

The origin [of the word Religion is] uncertain, being 
disputed by ancient writers. 

Recognition of and allegiance in manner of life to a 
superhuman power. Sense of obligation; conscientious- 
ness : Bense of duty. 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 51 

Standard Dictionary : 

A belief binding the spiritual nature of man to a super- 
natural being on whom he is conscious that he is depend- 
ent ; also the practice that springs out of the recognition 
of such a relation, including the personal life and experi- 
ence, the doctrines and duties and rites founded on it. 

Religion is morality. 

Worcester's Dictionary : 

An acknowledgment of our obligation to God as our 
Creator, with a feeling of reverence and love, and conse- 
quent duty or obedience to him ; duty to God and to his 
creatures; practical piety; godliness; devotion; devout- 
ness ; holiness. 

James i. 27 : 

To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction 
and to keep himself unspotted from the world. 

Micah vi. 8 : 

To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God. 

Swedenborg : 

All Religion is of life : and the life of Religion is to do 
good. 

Herbert Spencer : 

An absolute mystery. 

Something which passes comprehension. 

The consciousness of an Inscrutable Power. 

Belief in the Unknowable. 

Fichte : 

Religion is conscious morality, a morality which, in 



52 ETERNALISM 

virtue of that consciousness, is mindful of its origin in 
God. 

Spinoza : 

The love of God, founded on a knowledge of His divine 
perfections. 

Darwin : 

The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex 
one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted 
and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, 
fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps 
other elements. 

Thomas Paine : 

To do good is my Religion. 

Max Miiller : 

Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under 
such manifestations as are able to influence the moral 
character of man. 

Kant: 

Religion consists in our recognizing all our duties as 
Divine commands. 

Matthew Arnold : 

Religion is morality touched by emotion 

Comtc : 

The Worship of Humanity. 

Alexander Bain : 

The religious sentiment is constituted by the Tender 
Emotion, together with Pear, and the Sentiment of the 
Sublime. 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 53 

Edward Caird : 

A man's Religion is the expression of his ultimate atti- 
tude to the Universe, the summed-up meaning and purport 
of his whole consciousness of things. 

Hegel : 

The knowledge acquired by the Finite Spirit of its 
essence as an Absolute Spirit- 
Huxley: 

Reverence and love for the Ethical ideal, and the desire 
to realize that ideal in life. 

Mill: 

The essence of Religion is the strong and earnest direc- 
tion of the emotions and desires towards an ideal object, 
recognized as of the highest excellence, and as rightly 
paramount over all selfish objects of desire. 

Gruppe : 

A belief in a State or in a Being which, properly speak- 
ing, lies outside the sphere of human striving and attain- 
ment, but which can be brought into this sphere in a 
particular way, namely, by sacrifices, ceremonies, prayers, 
penances, and self-denial. 

Carlyle : 

The thing a man does practically believe ; the thing a 
man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, 
concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe 
and his duty and destiny therein. 

J. R. Seeley: 

Religion in its elementary state is what may be de- 
scribed as habitual and permanent admi^tion. 



54 ETERNALISM 

Dr. Martineau: 

Religion is a belief in an everlasting God ; that is, a 
Divine mind and will, ruling the Universe, and holding 
moral relations with mankind. 

Froude : 

There are at bottom but two possible Religions — that 
which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes 
shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out 
of the observation of the material energies which operate 
in the external universe. 

George MacDonald : 

Life and Religion are one, or neither is anything: I 
will not say neither is growing to be anything. Religion 
is no way of life, no show of life, no observance of any 
sort. It is neither the food nor medicine of being. It is 
life essential. 

Benjamin Kidd : 

A form of belief, providing an ultra-rational sanction 
for social conduct. 

D' Alviella : 

The conception man forms of his relation to the super- 
human and mysterious powers on which he believes him- 
self to depend. 



in 



THE TRUE DEFINITION WILL BE FOUND IN 
INSTINCTIVE AND PERMANENT BELIEF 

THE mass of intelligent religious believers are 
growing rapidly in toleration and breadth of 
view. They hold with tenacity to what they believe 
to be the essentials, and are indifferent to the non- 
essentials, in Religion. To these liberal minds the 
moralities are the essentials, and the formalities are 
the non-essentials. 

And many who are classed as unbelievers have 
recognized that there must be some truth in a sen- 
timent so deeply intrenched in the foundations of 
human nature as is the religious sentiment. Chief 
among these is Herbert Spencer, who has expressed 
this thought at length in his " First Principles," from 
which I quote : 

"Of Religion, then, we must always remember that 
amid its many errors and corruptions it has asserted and 
diffused a supreme verity. From the first, the recogni- 
tion of tills supreme verity, in however imperfect a man- 
ner, has been its vital element ; and its various defects, 
once extreme but gradually diminishing, have been so 
many failures to recognize in full that which it recognized 
in part. The truly religious element of Religion has al- 



56 ETERNALISM 

ways been good ; that which has proved untenable in 
doctrine and vicious in practice has been its irreligious 
element ; and from this it has ever been undergoing puri- 
fication. " 

Of the universality of Religion, Tito Vignoli says : 

" There is no society, however rude and primitive, in 
which all the relations, both of the individual and of the 
society itself, are not visibly based on [religious] supersti- 
tions and mythical beliefs." — Myth and Science, 41. 

Tiele says : 

" The statement that there are nations or tribes which 
possess no Religion rests either on inaccurate observations 
or on a confusion of ideas." — Outlines, 6. 

Max Miiller says : 

" Wherever there is human life, there is Religion." 

Tylor ranks perhaps as the foremost investigator 
of primitive beliefs. In considering the theory that 
there must be tribes so low as to be destitute of reli- 
gious faith, he says : 

" Though the theoretical niche is ready and convenient, 
the actual statue to fill it is not forthcoming. The case 
is in some degree similar to that of the tribes asserted to 
exist without language or without the use of fire ; nothing 
in the nature of things seems to forbid the possibility of 
such existence, but as a matter of fact the tribes are not 
Found. Tims the assertion that rude non-religious tribes 
have been known in actual existence, though in theory 
|><)sm1>1c, and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest 
on that sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state of 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 57 

things, we are entitled to demand." — Primitive Cul- 
ture, i. 418. 

Concerning the harmonies in religious beliefs, 
Tylor also says : 

" No Religion of mankind lies in utter isolation from 
the rest, and the thoughts and principles of modern Chris- 
tianity are attached to intellectual clues which run back 
through far pre-Christian ages to the very origin of human 
civilization, perhaps even of human existence." — Primi- 
tive Culture, i. 421. 

Religion is older than feudalism, autocracy, and 
democracy; it is older than implements of metal, 
older than all language save only the rudiments of 
speech. Dynasties, nations, civilizations, and races 
have perished, but Religion survives. 

Older than all learning, taking root in the hearts 
of the lowest forms of men, it has lived to build and 
sustain the greatest institutions of learning and of 
charity in the world. 

It has been vital to and inseparable from man in 
all stages of his existence. It has inspired men to 
unselfishness and sacrifice ; it has made life endur- 
able to the forlorn and wretched, and it has com- 
forted nearly all of mankind in affliction and agony 
and bereavement, and in the face of death. 

In the name of Religion, on the other hand, super- 
stition has been developed, learning persecuted, cruel 
wars have been waged, and monstrous crimes com- 
mitted — including torture and many forms of mur- 



58 ETERNALISM 

der, from the slaughter of children on the sacrificial 
altar to the butchery of sects and communities. 

In view of these contradictory facts, and of the 
supreme importance of the whole subject of Religion, 
it is imperative that we shall make no error concern- 
ing its actual meaning. 

The essential truth or error in a philosophy is 
always found in its fundamental principle. There- 
fore we must search the foundations of Religion for 
the " supreme verity " to which Mr. Spencer refers, 
and the harmony of which Mr. Tylor speaks ; we 
must seek for the vital part of Religion, not alone in 
its origin, but in all important stages of its develop- 
ment, whether among savage, semi-civilized, or en- 
lightened men. 

It would be useless to attempt to discover a 
ground of agreement in all of the thought of the 
world concerning Religion, for the thinking on the 
subject has been voluminous and endless, good and 
bad, sane and insane. 

Nor should we expect to find an essential harmony 
in all religious organizations, great and small, tem- 
porary and permanent, powerful and insignificant. 
It is conceivable that a sect claiming to be religious 
is really irreligious. 

We should seek for the actual meaning of Religion 
in the broad principle or principles which have been 
accepted by great masses of men in places and times 
wide apart ; in the permanent manifestations of reli- 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 59 

gious sentiment, and in the instinctive, spontaneous, 
and untaught beliefs common to primitive men 
which survive in more highly developed form among 
the enlightened. 

And we must seek for it more particularly and 
finally in the harmony of belief in the great religious 
organizations now in existence ; for they must con- 
tain, in the natural order of growth, that which is 
worthy of survival in the religious faith that has 
preceded them. 



IV 

THE SURVIVAL OF THE SOUL IS AN INSTINC- 
TIVE AND A PERMANENT RELIGIOUS DOC- 
TRINE 

THE belief in a future life for the individual is 
accepted by all of the modern religious organ- 
izations of any importance. The belief that this 
future life will be endless is also held by all except 
the Buddhists, whose doctrine of Nirvana, it is 
usually assumed, means the final destruction or 
absorption of the individual life. 

Since the Buddhists believe, however, that the 
soul of the individual, after death and preceding 
Nirvana, lives for a period so long as to be well-nigh 
interminable, we find that Buddhism is still in har- 
mony with the other great religious organizations of 
the world — Christian, Mohammedan, and Oriental 
— in the belief that the souls of all men survive the 
death of their bodies. 

It is now conceded by enlightened theologians, as 
well as by philosophers, that religious institutions 
and beliefs have developed through the universal 
principle of evolution. And it follows that, as the 
oak is something more complete than the acorn, 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 61 

astronomy than astrology, man than the ape, so we 
shall find religious beliefs to be more perfectly devel- 
oped in enlightenment than in savagery. 

" For a principle of development," says Edward 
Caird (Evolution of Religion, 43, 44, 45), "neces- 
sarily manifests itself most clearly in the most ma- 
ture form of that which develops. ... It is the 
developed organism that explains the germ from 
which it grew. . . . We must find the key to the 
meaning of the first stage in the last." 

We shall discover little, however, in the earlier 
cults out of harmony with the universal modern doc- 
trine of the survival of the soul. There is no record 
of a religious organization of any consequence which 
denies wholly the life hereafter. Even the ancient 
Hebrews, whose faith was more materialistic doubt- 
less than any other that is known to us, believed in 
spirits in and without men, that Elijah "went up by 
a whirlwind into heaven," that the dead Samuel ap- 
peared to Saul, that " the Lord killeth and maketh 
alive : he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth 
up," and that all souls went at death to a vague and 
shadowy hereafter which could not be called life, and 
yet was not complete annihilation. 

In a comparatively few cases the future life is 
denied to some portion of mankind. The Tonga 
Islanders believed that immortality was the privilege 
of caste ; the Marquesas Islanders that women only 
would live hereafter ; the Fijians that the souls of 



62 ETERNALISM 

the wifeless would be annihilated ; the Nicaraguans 
and the Guinea negroes that the vicious would not 
survive death. 

Some recognition of the doctrine of a life here- 
after, of a soul separable from the body, is found in 
all forms of religious belief, ancient and modern, 
ignorant and enlightened, savage and civilized. As 
a rule this doctrine is asserted with clearness and 
completeness and with no form of reservation. 

Tylor claims (Primitive Culture, i. 424) " as a 
minimum definition of Religion, the belief in spirit- 
ual beings" which appears (p. 425) " among all low 
races with whom we have attained to thoroughly in- 
timate relations." He defines " the belief in spiritual 
beings " (p. 427) as including in its full development 
u the belief in souls and in a future state." 

This belief, he says (p. 426), is " the groundwork 
of the philosophy of Religion, from that of savages 
up to that of civilized man ; " and constitutes (p. 427) 
" an ancient and world-wide philosophy." 

Grant Allen says : 

" Religion, however, has one element within it still 
older, more fundamental, and more persistent than any 
mere belief in a God or Gods — nay, even than the custom 
oi supplicating and appeasing ghosts or Gods by gifts and 
observances. That element is the conception of the Life 
of the Dead: On the primitive belief in such a life all 
Religion ultimately bases itself The belief is in fact the 
earliest thing to appeal in Religion, for there are savage 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 63 

tribes who have nothing worth calling Gods, but have still 
a Religion or cult of their dead relatives." — The Evolu- 
tion of the Idea of God, 42. 

Brinton says : 

" I shall tell you of religions so crude as to have no 
temples or altars, no rites or prayers ; but I can tell you 
of none that does not teach the belief of the intercom- 
munion of the spiritual powers and man." — Religions of 
Primitive Peoples, 50. 

D' Alviella says : 

" The discoveries of the last five-and-twenty years, 
especially in the caves of France and Belgium, have estab- 
lished conclusively that as early as the mammoth age man 
practiced funeral rites, believed in a future life, and pos- 
sessed fetishes and perhaps even idols." — Hibbert Lec- 
tures, 15. 

John Fiske says : 

" No race or tribe of men has ever been found destitute 
of the belief in ,a ghost-world." ■ — Reality of Religion, 
169. 

Huxley says : 

" There are savages without God in any proper sense 
of the word, but there are none without ghosts." — Lay 
Sermons and Addresses, 163. 

Herbert Spencer says that the conception of the 
soul's survival of physical death, 

" along with the multiplying and complicating ideas aris- 
ing from it, we find everywhere — alike in the arctic 
regions and the tropics ; in the forests of North America 



64 ETERNALISM 

and in the deserts of Arabia ; in the valleys of the Him- 
alayas and in African jungles ; on the flanks of the Andes 
and in the Polynesian islands. It is exhibited with equal 
clearness by races so remote in type from one another that 
competent judges think they must have diverged before 
the existing distribution of land and sea was established — 
among straight haired, curly haired, woolly haired races ; 
among white, tawny, copper colored, black. And we find 
it among peoples who have made no advances in civiliza- 
tion as well as among the semi-civilized and the civilized. " 
— Sociology, ii. 689. 

It is a significant fact that the modern Hebrews, 
the Christians, and the Mohammedans accept the 
doctrine of the survival of the soul, thereby repudi- 
ating to that extent the Old Kevelation which they 
still accept formally as the word of God himself. 

In the same way the Chinese have repudiated Con- 
fucius. While the thought of Confucius is material- 
istic, the Chinese Religions are profoundly spiritual- 
istic. Not even Confucius, the adored and venerated 
philosopher of the Chinese, nor the writers of the 
Old Testament, could wean their followers perma- 
nently from the instinctive belief in a future life. 

Instinctive Religion — that which is permanent 
and untaught as distinguished from that which is 
temporary, isolated, or based on speculation or au- 
thority — tolerates no limitation upon the after-life 
of man. Here and there some teacher or prophet 
has proclaimed that only women, or the married, or 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 65 

the great, or the good, or even that no one, would 
survive death, but such theories have left no per- 
manent impression upon the religious convictions of 
mankind. 

Among these interpolations, contrary to the usual 
order, is the doctrine of Nirvana, which had its 
origin in the mind of " the Buddha." It is a com- 
paratively unimportant part of a great philosophy. 
We do not know that it has been accepted otherwise 
than perfunctorily by the Buddhists, and we may 
doubt that it will enter into the universal religious 
belief of the future. 

It should be observed that the soul doctrine of the 
lower culture has been amplified and extended by 
the higher culture. While a few of the lower tribes 
believed that some souls would not survive death, 
the modern religious organizations hold that all will 
survive. And while early Judaism discredited the 
immortality of the soul, the great religious organiza- 
tions founded upon the Hebrew revelation proclaim 
that all men are deathless. For more than six hun- 
dred years the Jewish church has accepted the doc- 
trine of " the resurrection of the dead " in the creed 
of Maimonides. 

And while the Oriental theory of Nirvana appar- 
ently includes an actual though a remote end to the 
life of the individual, the spiritual philosophy of the 
Buddhists is in many other respects more compre- 
hensive and complete than that of any other religious 



66 ETERNALISM 

organization concerning which we are fully informed 
— including as it does both the preexistence and the 
after-existence of the soul, and a theory of divine jus- 
tice for the individual which appeals with increasing 
force to the ethical thought of the world. 

The tendency in the development of religious faith 
has been distinctly in the direction of a broad, rather 
than of a narrow, affirmation of the theory of im- 
mortality. And it is clear that the world has not 
yet reached a final stage in the evolution of the doc- 
trine of the soul. 

Without entering upon grounds of speculation, 
however, we may confidently claim, in the light of 
all the facts obtainable, that the belief in a future 
life, in the survival of the soul, is now an essential 
and universal religious doctrine, and that it has been 
continuously the instinctive belief of mankind. 

The denial of the after-life is an irreligious doc- 
trine. It is in opposition to all that is spontaneous 
and permanent in religious belief. " Without a 
belief in a future life," says Kant, "no Religion can 
be conceived to exist." 



THE BELIEF IN THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE 
SOUL IS ALSO INSTINCTIVE AND PERMANENT 

"IT ENTEKTAIN a good hope," says Socrates, 
JL " that something awaits those who die, and 
that, as was said long since, it will be far better for 
the good than the evil." 

A very old belief — which grows with man's 
growth and strengthens with his enlightenment — 
is the faith that he is accountable for his actions. . 

Tylor, who doubts that the doctrine of retribution 
was universal among primitive races, admits that it 
existed among many, and that it extended and devel- 
oped with the growth of mankind. He says : 

" A comparison of doctrines held at various stages of 
culture may justify a tentative speculation as to their 
actual sequence in history, favoring the opinion that 
through an intermediate stage the doctrine of simple 
future existence was actually developed into the doctrine 
of future reward and punishment, a transition which, for 
deep import to human life, has scarcely its rival in the 
history of Religion." — Primitive Culture, ii. 84. 

D' Alviella says : 

" The idea of a judgment of the dead, to which the 



68 ETERNALISM 

theory of rewards and punishments naturally leads as its 
culmination, appears to have found its way into the minds 
even of very backward peoples." — Hibbert Lectures, 193. 

Tangible evidence of the belief in accountability 
by primitive tribes now extinct being lacking, many 
scientific investigators deny that it existed. 

Yet these investigators agree that propitiation was 
an universal rite among the lowest men, that it de- 
veloped with man's culture, and survives even to 
the present time. Why did primitive men propitiate 
the spirits of their dead ? And why did the later 
cults propitiate fetishes, idols, and gods ? 

Propitiation is offered through fear to powers to 
which one acknowledges accountability. The culprit 
propitiates his judge, the slave his master, the sub- 
ject his ruler. 

It is evident that the motive strong enough and 
general enough to impel all primitive tribes to pro- 
pitiate the spirits of the dead must have been based 
on the belief that man was accountable to the spirits, 
whom he credited with extraordinary powers. 

Peschel, Ratzel, and Schurtz, the modern German 
ethnographers, hold that the relation of cause and 
effect is ingrained in the minds of all men, including 
primitive men. 

The knowledge of primitive man begins with cause 
and effect. lie discovers that water quenches thirst, 
game is found under certain conditions, a cave gives 
shelter, friction brings fire, the sun yields heat and 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 69 

light, some plants are poisonous, frost withers, light- 
ning kills. 

The first lesson learned by the infant is connected 
with cause and effect. The mother is the source of 
food, the cause of protection. Later the child learns 
that through effort it can walk ; that some things are 
hurtful and others helpful ; some bitter, some sweet ; 
some heavy, some light. It discovers that some 
actions are beneficial, and may be safely repeated ; 
that others are injurious, and should be avoided. 
The beneficial it recognizes as good, the harmful as 
evil. That which hurts, even if inanimate, the child 
would punish ; that which is pleasant it rewards at 
least with a smile. The baby becomes a judge, and 
gives forth verdicts. Before it can speak its first 
word it knows much instinctively of cause and effect, 
of good and evil, recognizes the utility of rewards 
and punishments, and realizes dimly its own ac- 
countability. 

And so animals, within their limitations, under- 
stand cause and effect, knowing that certain actions 
are beneficial and others harmful. 

And the wisest man is distinguished from the 
dullest only by his superior knowledge of the results 
of causes, and of the distinction between good and 
evil. Knowledge consists only of the exploration 
of the great field of causation and accountability. 
Apparently nothing within reach of human observa- 
tion is separated from cause and effect. 



70 ETERNALISM 

Man's belief in his accountability — that is, in 
cause and effect — is fundamental. It begins with 
his first rational consideration of his relations to the 
external world and to the order of Nature, which 
he will later deify. 

Nature has two imperative commands which primi- 
tive man hears constantly — "Thou shalt" and "Thou 
shalt not." As his mind grows the horizon of his 
accountability extends until it passes beyond the 
confines of this life. 

Believing instinctively in his own survival of 
death, he anticipates naturally that in the after-life 
it will be " far better for the good than the evil." His 
ideas of good and evil may be crude, even wholly 
erroneous, but it is impossible for him, as it is for 
the child, to hold no theories of good and evil. 

It appears to me that the sense of accountability 
was in the nature of things the first religious senti- 
ment in the mind of man — that it is older than the 
belief in a future life and in superhuman powers — 
that it was based and still rests upon cause and 
effect, which are apparent to the infant and to the 
savage as well as to the enlightened — that the lower 
men perceived that the fruits of certain acts and things 
were good and of others bad, and that this percep- 
tion led inevitably, in the infancy of thought, to 
what we may call the doctrine of consef/ur/tccs, which 
is the doctrine of accountability, of rewards and 
penalties. 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 71 

Into the religious life of men has always been 
woven the theory of accountability. It is almost 
certain that all theories of a superhuman power or 
powers — of potent spirits, fetishes, idols, of many 
Gods, and finally of one God — grew out of man's 
feeling of accountability. His sense of accounta- 
bility forced him to believe that he was responsible 
to some power or principle which sets things right. 

Man has been so impressed usually by his account- 
ability for his sins — by " the dread of something 
after death " — that he has sought means of escape 
from it as he would from wild beasts, from flood, or 
from fire. 

D'Alviella (Hibbert Lectures, 179) says that Re- 
ligion from the first " developed a spirit of subordi- 
nation " and " favored the sacrifice of a direct and 
immediate satisfaction to a greater but more distant 
and indirect good." 

The theory of " a standard of duty prescribed by 
something loftier than immediate advantage," as 
Brinton expresses it, which was recognized dimly 
and roughly by the lower tribes, has been accepted 
by all later forms of faith. 

We find the doctrine of the accountability of the 
soul bedded in the foundations of Religion, entering 
completely into the life here, and into the life here- 
after. It lies at the base of all religious theories of 
compensation and retribution, of a day of judgment, 
of salvation and damnation, of heaven and hell. 



VI 

THE BELIEF IN GOD — THE WAR BETWEEN NAT- 
URALISM AND SUPERNATURALISM 

TO demonstrate the common principle in man's 
faith in superhuman influences and powers, 
which has developed into the belief in God, is a work 
of no little difficulty, if we limit ourselves to a mere 
comparison of the many objects to which man has 
attributed divine qualities. 

For man, in the varying stages of the evolution 
of religious beliefs, has worshiped his own ancestors ; 
trees, herbs, plants, and flowers ; pebbles, small 
stones, and great rocks ; hills and mountains ; the 
dawn, sun, moon, and stars ; the fire and sea ; mum- 
mies and idols ; ravens and other birds ; lions, tigers, 
wolves, calves, goats, and coyotes ; fishes, snakes, 
crocodiles, and lizards ; and many Gods, some being 
good and others bad. 

That an essential harmony does exist in man's 
varying beliefs in superhuman powers, we cannot 
doubt, since these beliefs have been universal and 
have developed on natural lines. The lowest concep- 
tions gave way to something better, and these to 
something still better — fetishism to idolatry, idolatry 
to polytheism, polytheism to monotheism. 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 73 

It would be easy to jump at this point to the con- 
clusion that the highest theistic conception is found 
in the one God of the Christian Religion. Two 
hundred years ago such a claim could have been 
made with better grounds of reason than now. Then 
the tendency of religious thought, in the Western 
world at least, was distinctly in the direction of one 
God, personal and supernatural, the Creator and 
Ruler of the Universe. 

Since that time, however, and particularly within 
the last thirty years, there has been a significant 
revolt against the theory of Supernaturalism. Great 
leaders in religious thought now declare that evolu- 
tion is God's law and God's way, and that the natural 
order is identical with the divine order. 

The doctrine of Supernaturalism is now attacked 
with vigor from the inside and from the outside of 
the churches. The highest scientific thought accepts 
the invariableness of law, the impossibility of the 
supernatural. Religious thought adjusts itself slowly 
but invariably to scientific thought. More changes 
in religious and scientific conceptions are registered 
now in one year than in some of the earlier centuries. 
A battle royal is now on between the hosts of Natu- 
ralism and Supernaturalism, and there are many 
reasons for believing that the latter has passed the 
maximum of its strength, and will appeal hereafter 
with decreasing force to human belief. 



VII 

THE MEANING OF THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL 
RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 

FOR the present I shall postpone the inquiry into 
the God-belief, the meaning of which will be- 
come clearer after an examination into the deeper 
significance of the two religious beliefs which, as we 
have discovered, are fundamental and permanent — 
one being the doctrine of the survival of the soul, 
and the other the doctrine of the accountability of 
the soul. In the harmony in these two doctrines we 
shall find the actual significance of the belief in 
God. 

To begin with the first doctrine, Why has the 
belief in the survival of the soul been fundamental 
in all forms of faith ? 

The Materialist assumes that the belief in a life 
hereafter can be explained in man's fear or vanity — 
in his fear of annihilation, or in his assumption that 
his life is too important to be extinguished by death. 

It man, through fear of annihilation, had adopted 
the theory of another life, he would have invented 
heaven only, or at least a condition not more wretched 
than his present life; and not hell, which is worse. 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 75 

Men, through fear, do not jump deliberately from 
bad to worse. Nor if moved by vanity would man 
have invented hell. Vanity could have inspired 
heaven only. 

The reasoning powers of primitive man were fee- 
ble and undeveloped. His religious beliefs were the 
results of feeling rather than of reasoning. In the 
main, or perhaps wholly, they were instinctive and 
spontaneous beliefs. 

And yet there must be something veritable in the 
faith of primitive man, since it has been a vital part 
of all later religious belief, and has been held with 
as much tenacity by enlightened men as by savages. 

Moreover, the truest of all thoughts and beliefs 
are those which are inborn and instinctive in the 
human race. 

If primitive man had comprehended the rational 
meaning of his belief in the survival of the soul, he 
would doubtless have interpreted it as follows : 

" We have adopted the theory of another life 
because of the injustice in this one. 

" We perceive that there are wrongs here which 
are not righted here, and good which is not rewarded 
here ; and, having faith in the justice of the Uni- 
verse, we demand another world to right the wrongs 
of this one." 

The origin of the belief in the survival of the soul, 
and the cause of its persistence and vitality, is found 
in the fact that justice can be established in human 
affairs only upon the theory of immortality. 



76 ETERNALISM 

And why also has the belief been universal that 
man is accountable here and hereafter for his ac- 
tions ? And why is man impelled to believe that his 
conduct here will influence his fate hereafter ? 

The voice which we have just quoted would answer 
as follows : 

" We have always been busy with the questions of 
right and wrong. They crowd upon us imperatively. 
We cannot be indifferent to them ; for wrong op- 
presses and tortures us. 

" Our natures are such that we are forced to 
believe that wrongs should be righted, that justice 
should prevail, that the evil should be punished and 
the good rewarded. 

" No sane man can entertain the contrary belief 
— that wrongs should not be righted, that mjustice 
should prevail, that the evil should be rewarded and 
the good punished. 

" Believing that right should prevail, we are forced 
to believe also that right will prevail, that justice 
will be done. 

" And since, in the life here, wrongs are not always 
righted, and justice is not always completed, we are 
compelled either to abandon our faith in right and 
justice, or to believe that they will be completed in 
another life, or in other lives." 

It is now evident that the theory that man is ac- 
countable eternally for his actions is the doctrine that 
justice should and will be enforced. 



VIII 

ETERNAL JUSTICE IS THE ACTUAL MEANING 
OF RELIGION 

ONE of the two fundamental religious beliefs is 
the doctrine of the survival of the soul — that 
time shall be given for the completion of justice. 
The other is the doctrine of the accountability of the 
soul — that man shall reap as he sows ; that justice 
shall be done. 

Both doctrines are vital to justice, and in the 
absence of either justice could not exist. 

It is plain that these two noble moral beliefs are 
but servitors upon a yet nobler principle. And it is 
evident that this central principle is Justice — and 
more particularly Eternal Justice — - which is the 
actual meaning of objective Religion. 

Religion should be defined in a subjective sense, 
as maris recognition of and belief in Eternal Jus- 
tice, in the moral order of the Universe, in a Su- 
preme Power or Principle of Pightness. 

We can now understand why Religion — the faith 
in Justice, respect for Justice, love of Justice, desire 
for Justice — is older than the arts and sciences, 
than language and learning, than all of the other 



78 ETERNALISM 

institutions of men. For, without some comprehen- 
sion of Justice, man could never have been man. It 
is his sense of Justice that makes him a man. 

It is also obvious that Religion had no miraculous 
origin — that it was born with the awakening of 
man's moral senses, and that it will live so long as 
his moral senses survive. 

Religion is as natural as the rocks, trees, and soil, 
as fruit, flowers, and fragrance, as the glory of dawn 
and sunrise, as brother-love and mother-love, as the 
hunger for Justice in the heart of man. 

It is faith in Eternal Justice alone that has com- 
forted the unfortunate, the afflicted, and the sorrow- 
ful, — that has made life endurable to the desolate, 
the wronged, and the dying, — that has been the 
source and inspiration of every religious thought, 
hope, and aspiration of man. 

From this faith in Justice have grown inevitably 
our theories of right and wrong, our sense of duty 
and our code of morality — the belief in honor and 
honesty and rectitude — all of which would have no 
meaning if Justice be denied. 

Morality is a question of duty, and duty is an 
obligation which Justice compels us to pay. Duty 
Includes veracity, integrity, sincerity, benevolence, 
charity, good-will, self-respect, gratitude, fidelity, and 
all oilier virtues. 

The Golden Rule is the perfect law by which Jus- 
tice is determined. And Kant's famous " categorical 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 79 

imperative " — " Act according to that maxim only 
which you can wish at the same time to become the 
universal law " — is also an exact law of Justice. 

Justice is the foundation of every phase of retri- 
bution, vindication, reparation, indemnity, obligation, 
accountability. From whatever point we take up 
morals, we trace them back to their root in Justice. 

"The real first truth of morality," says Victor 
Cousin, "is Justice. It is Justice, therefore, and 
not duty, that strictly deserves the name of a prin- 
ciple." 

" Universal Justice," says Aristotle, " includes all 
virtue." 

"Justice is the greatest good," says Plato. 

Religion is a complete and perfect system of 
morality. Eternal Justice, the accountability of the 
soul, the immortality of the soul, and all other 
moral principles, are joined and linked together, and 
are inseparable. If one be true, all are true. If 
one be false, all are false. The heart of all morality 
is Justice. And the heart of all Religion is Jus- 
tice. 

The perversions of Religion are immoral, or un- 
moral, but real Religion has no meaning which is 
not moral. 

Is Religion, then, identical with morality? Can 
we say that a moral Materialist is a religious man ? 

Religion means more than personal morality — it 
means the moral order of the Universe. The Mate- 



80 ETERNALISM 

rialist is religious in so far as he leads a moral life ; 
he is irreligious in his denial of the life hereafter, 
which is also a denial logically of the Tightness of 
the Eternal Order. 

And, inversely, one who recognizes the moral 
order of the Universe may be a religious man to 
that extent only, and irreligious in so far as he leads 
an immoral life. 



IX 

A HARMONY IN THE DEFINITIONS OF RELI- 
GION—ITS PERVERSIONS — ITS ORIGIN 

WITH the comprehension of the true mean- 
ing of the word Religion, we perceive a 
harmony not before apparent in many of the con- 
flicting definitions of the word. 

The " Overruling Power " in the definition in 
Webster's Dictionary — the "Superhuman Power" 
in the Century — the " Supernatural Being" in the 
Standard — the " Ethical Ideal " in Huxley — the 
" Absolute Mystery " in Herbert Spencer — the 
"Ideal Object" in Mill — the "Everlasting God" 
in Martineau — come into harmony when we accept 
them as idealizations, interpretations, or deifications 
of the divine order of Eternal Justice. 

The terms quoted in the preceding paragraph — 
with the exception of Huxley's " Ethical Ideal " — 
carry no clear meaning to the mind. 

It is impossible to determine, for illustration, 
whether a " Superhuman Power," a " Supernatural 
Being," or an " Absolute Mystery," is either bad or 
good, diabolical or divine, save as one may apply 
one's own arbitrary interpretation to the term. 



82 ETERNALISM 

Huxley's " Ethical Ideal," when defined, means 
Justice, the base and source of all morality. 

The misconception and perversion of Religion have 
been prominent in the development of religious 
beliefs. Irreligion has masqueraded as Religion, as 
lies have masqueraded as truth. 

The perversions of Religion bear the same relation 
to real Religion that error bears to accuracy, and 
counterfeit to genuine. 

Real Religion has developed no pomp, pageantry, 
or ceremonies, has demanded no bloody sacrifices, has 
established no inquisitions, has persecuted, tortured, 
and murdered no unbelievers nor dissenters. These 
performances, rites, and acts are irreligious. 

The superstitions of the church are inheritances 
from our savage ancestors. The wars and feuds in 
the name of Religion have their source in the per- 
versions of Religion. 

Religion is the moral order of the Universe which, 
like evolution, gravitation, and equilibrium, has ex- 
isted, and will continue to exist, regardless of man's 
recognition, or of his ignorant misinterpretations. 

From whence comes this religious belief which is 
common among men ? 

The origin of Religion presents no more difficul- 
ties than the source or cause of all other knowledge 
that is classed as instinctive or innate. That man 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 83 

believes instinctively in Eternal Justice is not more 
marvelous than that animals swim, and infants 
suckle, without instruction. 

It may be doubted that any form of instinctive 
knowledge can be named which is not also true and 
vital. Instinct saves the animal from drowning, and 
the infant from starvation. It impels and inspires 
in the ways of salvation. 

Only one question has ever troubled man — in 
slavery and freedom, in savagery and enlightenment 
— and that is the many-sided and ever-present issue 
between Eight and Wrong. It is not remarkable 
that he is born with a belief favorable to Justice and 
antagonistic to Injustice — and that this belief is the 
strongest conviction that has ever entered his mind. 
Man turns as instinctively to Justice as to shelter, 
food, warmth, light. 

The belief in Eternal Justice is the true faith, and 
the denial of the moral order of the Universe is the 
only real infidelity. 

Perceiving now that man's religious belief is nat- 
ural, it is evident that Religion can be defended and 
its truth demonstrated more perfectly on natural 
than on supernatural grounds — that it has not only 
a rational but a scientific standing. 



THE MEANING OF THE BELIEF IN GOD— IN- 
HERITED THEOLOGY— SUPERNATURALISM 

WHAT, then, is the actual meaning of the 
belief, which has always charmed the mind 
of man, in a Divine Power? It is not devotion 
alone to Jehovah, Allah, or Brahma, to Woden, 
Zeus, or Osiris, to fetish or idol. Many of the Gods 
of the past have been abandoned, and others may yet 
pass into oblivion, but the faith in God survives, 
and will doubtless continue to survive, with undi- 
minished force. 

Man has always believed that there must be a 
Power that rights things. His conception of this 
Power has often been infantile, grotesque, or mon- 
strous. 

The theological ideas of savages are as crude as 
their language, garments, and habitations. Some 
have advanced theories, others have dreamed dreams, 
and others have either assumed to be, or believed 
themselves to be, inspired to utter divine truth. 

These savage beliefs have been handed down from 
generation to generation, gaining in authority and 
sanHity with time, and influencing and coloring the 
views of later and more enlightened eras. 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 85 

Each age has usually inherited the Theology of a 
darker age. Clodd says : 

" There is not a rite or ceremony yet practiced and 
revered among us that is not the lineal descendant of 
barbaric thought and usage." — Myths and Dreams, 168. 

The gross descriptions of Gods and Devils, heaven 
and hell, as presented in many mythologies, are the 
efforts of the earlier men, who lived in darkness, to 
picture the central religious principle of Eternal 
Justice — the Gods being personalizations of Justice, 
the Devils of evil ; heaven being the reward of vir- 
tue, hell the penalty of sin. 

Back of the most ignorant forms of faith there is 
always a spark of truth. Mankind have never de- 
parted absolutely from the moral truth, and have 
been incapable of holding a false belief that did not 
in some sense, even though vaguely, symbolize a 
truth. 

In remote times man conceived that the Over- 
ruling Power could be bribed with food or other 
gifts, or appeased by flattery, charms, service, or sac- 
rifice. Out of these childish ideas grew the faith in 
talismans and exorcisms ; confessions, humiliations, 
supplications, and glorifications ; macerations, muti- 
lations, and mediations. 

After the organization of social and political in- 
stitutions, men gradually changed their theological 
ideals to harmonize with their own broader knowl- 



86 ETERNALISM 

edge. They now conceived of a Divine Ruler as 
having the form of an earthly Chief or King, who 
could not be propitiated by the offer of food and such 
other gifts as would impress a savage mind, but who 
could be swayed by homage, supplication, and praise, 
or by ceremonies, pomp, and pageantry. 

This conception of God as of an earthly autocrat 
with unlimited supernatural powers — as one who 
" hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom 
he will he hardeneth" — survives among us to this 
day, although it is discredited, and cannot long exist 
under the lights which science and reason have 
turned upon it. 

For man's thought concerning Religion is con- 
stantly broadening and improving. The thought of 
to-day is far better than the thought of a hundred, 
or even of ten, years ago, and the thought of the 
future will be still clearer and better. 

Supernaturalism is the doctrine that God can and 
does interfere with the natural order of cause and 
effect — that he can and does alter, change, suspend, 
or disregard the laws of Nature — that the natural 
order is inadequate for the expression of the divine 
will. 

The theory that man is accountable to a Super- 
natural Power is a survival of the Theology of primi- 
tive men, who assumed also that thunder and light- 
ning, rain and snow, wind and drought, were visited 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 87 

on men arbitrarily by the same Supernatural Power. 
We know now that all of these phenomena are 
produced and controlled in the natural order — that 
rain and snow, wind and drought, are the unvarying 
results of meteorological causes. 

And we should know also that everything is the 
result of a cause — that moral causes are as effective, 
and moral results as sure, as physical causes and 
physical results — that the religious doctrine of 
moral accountability is nothing more or less than 
the scientific law that definite effects must follow 
definite causes. 

We shall not comprehend the full meaning of 
Religion until we realize that it is wholly natural — 
that the supernatural has no existence — that life 
hereafter and out of the body is as natural as life here 
and in the body — that man's moral accountability 
is not to a Supernatural Power, but to the Law — 
that the Law of Moral Accountability administers 
itself, as all of the other laws of Nature administer 
themselves, in an unbroken series of causes and 
effects — that man, air, water, earth, stars, all things, 
are subject to Nature's laws, which are just and 
changeless — that God, the Supreme Power or Prin- 
ciple of Eightness, is manifest only through the 
order of Nature ; is guiltless of partiality, pride, 
vanity, and jealousy, and is not swayed by pomp and 
pageantry, nor by homage, supplication, and praise. 

And we shall make little progress in the investi- 



88 ETERNALISM 

gation of the fundamental meaning of Keligion until 
we approach it in the scientific spirit, uninfluenced 
on the one hand by the dogma of Theology, which 
places authority above reason, asserting that the 
whole truth was revealed to one or to a few long 
ago ; and uninfluenced on the other hand by the 
dogma of Agnosticism, which asserts that the ques- 
tion is beyond the reach of reason, being in the 
domain of the Unknown, the Supernatural, the In- 
comprehensible. 



XI 

IT IS NOT WELL TO SCORN THE MORAL RE- 
SULTS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE 

THE religious questions are the problems of 
man's eternal life. The Materialist is forced 
to believe that there has been nothing rational in the 
perennial interest of mankind in these problems; 
for, from the standpoint of Materialism, there is for 
man no eternal life. 

To assume that mankind, from the earliest days of 
the human race to the present time, have been per- 
petually and seriously absorbed in the contemplation 
of a phase of life which does not exist, and of moral 
relations and eternal obligations which have no foun- 
dation in truth, is to assume that practically all men 
in all times have been subject to one form of hallu- 
cination which would stamp them as a race of mad- 
men. 

This universal belief of mankind is, in its simplest 
terms, the faith that the Eternal Order is moral and 
just. If this faith be a delusion, it is a noble delu- 
sion. 

On the other hand, the belief of the Materialist is 
based logically upon the presumption that the Eter- 



90 ETERNALISM 

nal Order is immoral and unjust — that the noblest 
being merits no praise for what it is, and the vilest 
creature no blame — that for suicide there can be no 
penalty — that for the tyrants, oppressors, robbers, 
and scourgers of the weak, for the brutes who 
trample on women and children, for ingrates and 
murderers, there can be no eternal reckoning — that 
man sows what he will not reap, and reaps what he 
has not sown. Materialism is a cold, deadly, soul- 
killing doctrine, in which there is no spark of light 
or hope or love or Justice. 

Religion is the belief in Eternal Justice ; Material- 
ism is the belief in Eternal Injustice. 

The faith of Religion is a moral faith ; while it 
must be said in fairness that the philosophy of 
Materialism, which attributes injustice and immo- 
rality to the Eternal Order, must consequently be 
classed as the philosophy of injustice and immorality, 
or as an unjust and immoral belief. 

The believers in morality and Justice have been 
the many ; the believers in immorality and injustice 
the few. 

It would be unreasonable, under the circumstances, 
to say that the moral belief of the mass of mankind 
is irrational, and that the immoral belief of a com- 
paratively small number of men is rational. It 
would be fairer to say that the moral belief of men, 
whether held by the few or by the many, is always 
true ; and that their immoral belief is always false. 



THE ACTUAL MEANING OF RELIGION 91 

It is not well to scorn the moral results of human 
experience. They represent all the thought, care, 
labor, sorrow, trial, persecution, martyrdom, travail, 
and agony of mankind. They are the sacred legacies 
which all the dead have left to the living. 

If they are worthless, then indeed is life barren 
and bitter, its joys illusions, its hopes as the mirage 
of the desert which beckons one forward to disap- 
pointment and death. 

Pure Religion, separated from all error and super- 
stition, offers to mankind the hope and faith, based 
on all human experience, and in harmony with all 
truth, that there is no wrong which will not be righted ; 
and, for those who live justly, no trouble which will 
not end, no night of sorrow or anguish which will 
not be succeeded by the dawn of peace and joy. 

On the other hand, Materialism offers to the 
human race but one thing which, from the stand- 
point of Fatalism, is akin to justice — and that is 
suicide. He who is dissatisfied here can go hence, 
if the theory of Materialism be true, to the somber 
unconsciousness from which he but recently emerged. 

Let mankind choose between the consolations 
which these two beliefs — Religion and Materialism 
— offer to the race of men ! 



PART III 
FATALISM 



THAT WHICH THEOLOGY CALLS PREDESTINA- 
TION, PHILOSOPHY NAMES NECESSITY — BOTH 
TERMS MEAN FATALISM 

«T)KEDESTINATION and Fatalism," says 
JL Schopenhauer, "do not differ in the main. 
They differ only in this, that with Predestination 
the external determination of human action proceeds 
from a rational Being, and with Fatalism from an 
irrational one. But in either case the result is the 
same — that happens which must happen." 

" No less noticeable is it," says Froude, " that the 
materialistic and the metaphysical philosophers deny 
as completely as Calvinism what is popularly called 
Free-will." 

Dugald Stewart says : 

" This question about Predestination and Free-will has 
furnished, in all ages and countries, inexhaustible matter 
of contention, both to philosophers and divines. In the 
ancient schools of Greece it is well known how generally 
and how keenly it was agitated. Among the Moham- 
medans it constitutes one of the principal points of divi- 
sion between the followers of Omar and those of Ali; and 
among the ancient Jews it was the subject of endless dis- 
pute between the Pharisees and Sadducees. It is scarcely 



96 ETERNALISM 

necessary for me to add, what violent controversies it has 
produced, and still continues to produce, in the Christian 
world." — The Active and Moral Powers of Man, 268. 

That which Theology calls Predestination, philoso- 
phy names Necessity. The meaning of both terms 
is Fatalism. 

The ablest logicians — Jews, Christians, Moham- 
medans, Deists, Atheists, Materialists, Agnostics — 
reasoning from the theory that the soul of man is 
created, have been unable to disprove the doctrine 
of Fatalism, and much the greater number have 
accepted it. 

It has been supported alike by Augustine, Luther, 
Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards ; by Hume, Voltaire, 
John Stuart Mill, and Buckle ; by Buchner, Haeckel, 
Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Robert G. Ingersoll ; 
by Spinoza, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Lord Karnes, Diderot, 
Priestley, D'Holbach, Laplace, Schopenhauer, Mole- 
schott, and Froude. 

We may be sure that these thinkers have accepted 
most unwillingly a doctrine so cold, black, and for- 
bidding as Fatalism, and that in doing so they were 
impelled by logic which seemed to them inexorable. 

A few philosophers of rank have denied Fatalism, 
though none has been able to disprove it without 
abandoning the creative hypothesis. 

"Sir," says Johnson to Boswell, " we know our 
will is tree, and there \s an end on 't." 

Locke — one of the clearest reasoners that the 



FATALISM 97 

world has produced, who was called by Voltaire " a 
thinking machine " — after having given much space 
in his published works to an attempt to refute the 
theory of Necessity, wrote these memorable words : 

" I cannot have a clearer perception of anything than that 
I am free, yet I cannot make freedom in man consistent 
with omnipotence and omniscience in God, though I am 
as fully persuaded of both as of any truth I most firmly 
assent to ; and therefore / have long since given off the 
consideration of that question, resolving all into the short 
conclusion that if it be possible for God to make a free 
agent, then man is free, though I see not the way of it" 

Berkeley, in his " Aleiphron," struggles to answer 
" the minute philosophers," and, failing, he falls back 
upon the assertion that "it is evident to me, in the 
gross and concrete, that I am a free agent." At 
another point he says : " And thus, by an induc- 
tion of particulars, I may conclude man to be a 
free agent, although I may be puzzled to define or 
conceive a notion of freedom in general and ab- 
stract." 

Bain says that the question of Free-will is " that 
hampered lock of metaphysics," that "paradox of 
the first degree," " that inextricable knot." 

Kant attempts to refute the doctrine of Necessity 
by assuming that reason is subject to transcendental 
laws, thus removing the whole question from the 
domain of human experience. 

Descartes says : " However difficult it may be to 



98 ETERNALISM 

reconcile Predestination with liberty, we have an 
internal feeling that the voluntary and the free are 
the same." In contradiction to this feeble assertion 
of the possibility of freedom, he says : " The perfec- 
tion of God requires that the least thought in us 
should have been predetermined from all eternity. 
The decrees of God are unchangeable, and prayer 
has an efficacy only because the prayer is decreed 
together with the answer." 

Bishop Butler (Analogy, 177, 178), being unable 
to refute the doctrine of Necessity, assumes that, 
" wherever the fallacy lies," it must be " somehow or 
other " false, since it is in conflict with moral ac- 
countability, " a contradiction to the whole constitu- 
tion of Nature, and so overturns everything." 

" How moral liberty is possible in man," says Sir 
William Hamilton (Discussions on Philosophy, 621), 
" we are utterly unable speculatively to understand." 
Since, however, " we are free in act if we are ac- 
countable for our actions," he classes Free-will 
among those things " which may, nay ?nust, be true, 
of which the understanding is wholly unable to con- 
strue to itself the possibility " 



II 

ALL FORMS OF FATALISM ARE BASED ON THE 
ASSUMPTION THAT MAN'S CHARACTER IS 
MADE FOR HIM 

HUME expresses what he calls " the very es- 
sence " of the doctrine of Necessity in these 
words : 

" It seems certain, that however we may imagine we feel 
a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer 
our actions from our motives and character ; and even 
where he cannot, he concludes in general, that he might, 
were he perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of 
our situation and temper, and the most secret springs of 
our complexion and disposition. Now this is the very 
essence of Necessity, according to the foregoing doctrine." 
— Essays, ii. 77. 

That is, since man has been made as he is, he must 
act as he does. If he acts wisely, it is because he 
was created wise ; if he acts foolishly, it is because 
he was created foolish. His acts are the results of 
the nature that was implanted in him by his Maker. 

We shall find the same thought used as the main 
support — indeed as the only support, since all other 
arguments proceed from it — of every intelligent 
defense of the theory of Necessity. 
L.ofC. 



100 ETERNALISM 

Buckle says (History of Civilization, i. 14-20) 
that conduct follows inevitably from disposition and 
character. " In a given state of society a certain 
number of persons must put an end to their own 
life." 

Spinoza says (Froude's Short Studies, 240) that 
man's destiny is fixed in the act of his creation, of 
which fact he can find no better illustration than in 
the words of Saint Paul : " Hath not the potter 
power over the clay, of the same lump to make one 
vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor ? " 

" That is not free," also says Spinoza, " which is 
called into existence by something else, and is deter- 
mined in its operations according to a fixed and defi- 
nite method." 

Herbert Spencer, who speaks of Free-will as " the 
current illusion," says (Psychology, 504) that " the 
nature of the ego is predetermined ; the infant had 
no more to do with the structure of its brain than 
with the color of its eyes." 

Haeckel, who characterizes Free-will as " a pure 
dogma, based on an illusion," says (Riddle of the 
Universe, 131) : " We now know that each act of 
the will is fatally determined by the organization of 
the individual" 

John Stuart Mill defined a Necessitarian as one 
who believes that " our actions follow from our char- 
acters." He accepted the common belief that our 
characters are given to us by our Maker. 



FATALISM 101 

Voltaire says : 

" You receive your ideas, and, therefore, receive your 
will. You will then necessarily ; consequently, the word 
liberty belongs not to will in any sense. . . . 

" Can we change our character ? ... If I have a wry 
nose and cat's eye, I can hide them behind a mask : and 
can I do more with the character that Nature has given 
me ? 

11 A Free-will is a word absolutely void of sense ; and 
that which scholars have called indifference, that is to say, 
will without cause, is a chimera, unworthy to be com- 
bated. . . . 

u We exclaim, if it be thus, all things are machines 
merely ; everything in the universe is subjected to eternal 
laws. . . . Either all is the consequence of the nature of 
things, or all is the effect of the eternal order of an abso- 
lute master ; in both cases we are only wheels to the ma- 
chine of the world. 

" Where is the man who, when he looks into himself, 
perceives not that he is a puppet of Providence ? I think 
— but can I give myself a thought ? . . . 

" I acquire a knowledge, but I could not give it to my- 
self. My intelligence cannot be the cause of it ; for the 
cause must contain the effect. Now, my first acquired 
knowledge was not in my understanding ; being the first, 
it was given to me by him who formed ?ne, and who gives 
all 9 whatever it may be. . . . 

" All our sentiments, are they not involuntary ? Hear- 
ing, taste, and sight are nothing by themselves. We feel, 
in spite of ourselves : we do nothing of ourselves : we are 
nothing without a Supreme Power which enacts all 
things." — Philosophical Dictionary, i. 173, 353. 



102 ETERNALISM 

Dugald Stewart, who made a careful study of all 
the arguments advanced in favor of Necessity, says 
that its advocates 

" have contended that the actions we perform &re the nec- 
essary results of the constitution of our minds, operated 
on by the circumstances of our external situation ; and 
that what we call moral delinquencies are as much a part 
of our destiny as the corporeal or intellectual qualities 
ive have received from nature. . . . 

" ' Nothing is more usual for fervent devotion/ says Sir 
James Mackintosh, ' than to dwell so long and so warmly 
on the meanness and worthlessness of created things, and 
on the all-sufficiency of the Supreme Being, that it slides 
insensibly from comparative to absolute language, and, 
in the eagerness of its zeal to magnify the Deity, seems to 
annihilate every thing else.'' 

" This excellent observation may serve to account for 
the zeal displayed by many devout men in favor of the 
scheme of Necessity. ' We have nothing,' they frequently 
and justly remind us, 'but what ive have received.'' " — 
Active and Moral Powers, 268, 276. 

Belsham says that the doctrine of Necessity 
teaches us 

" to look up to God as the prime agent, and the proper 
cause of every thing that happens, and to regard men as 
nothing in ore than instruments which he employs for 
accomplishing his good pleasure." 

Huxley says that the supporters of Free-will 
k% rest upon the absurd presumption that the proposition, 

'I can do as I like,' is contradictory to the doctrine of 
Necessity. The answer is : nobody doubts that, at any 



FATALISM 103 

rate within certain limits, you can do as you like. But 
what determines your likings and dislikings ? Did you 
make your own constitution ? " — Essay on Hume, 220. 
Hyslop says : 

" A man must act according to his nature, and he can- 
not act otherwise." — Elements of Ethics, 167. 

Buchner, one of the most frank and positive of 
the Materialistic philosophers, says : 

" He who brings with him into the world an innate 
tendency to benevolence, compassion, conscientiousness, 
love of justice, and so on, is in most instances cut out for 
a good moralist, supposing that bad training or adverse 
conditions of life do not forcibly subdue that tendency ; 
whilst on the other hand a congenital proclivity to melan- 
choly, or indolence, or frivolity, or vanity, or arrogance, 
or avarice, or sensuality, or intemperance, or gambling, 
or violence, can, as a rule, be neither controlled nor checked 
by any kind of will or imagination. In point of fact, daily 
experience proves conclusively that each person generally 
acts in the manner most suited to his nature and indi- 
vidual character ; these inborn or inherited tendencies 
and leanings of our nature mostly exercise over our reso- 
lutions and actions an influence in comparison with which 
all other motives, especially those of reflection or religious 
belief, recede more or less into the background." — Force 
and Matter, 372. 

Lord Bacon says : 

" Man is no more responsible for his being than for the 
presence of color or sound, and he only knows that he is, 
by the perception of the senses given him that tell of the 
other things as well." — Principles of Human Knowledge. 



104 ETERNALISM 

Schopenhauer says : 

"A man may be said, but he cannot be conceived, 
to be the work of another, and at the same time be free 
in respect of his desires and acts. He who called him 
into existence out of nothing, in the same process created 
and determined his nature — in other words, the whole 
of his qualities. For no one can create without creating 
a something ; that is to say, a being determined through- 
out and in all its qualities. But all that a man says and 
does necessarily proceeds from the qualities so deter- 
mined ; for it is only the qualities themselves set in motion. 
It is only some external impulse that they require to make 
their appearance. As a man is, so must he act ; and praise 
or blame attaches, not to his separate acts, but to his 
nature and being. ... 

" Accordingly, the whole course of a man's life, in all 
its incidents great and small, is as necessarily prede- 
termined as the course of a clock. . . . Hence it is that 
every man achieves only that which is irrevocably estab- 
lished in his nature, or is born with him." — Free-will and 
Fatalism, 71-82. 

Robert Owen says that " a man's actions are the 
result of his character, and he is not the author of 
his character." 

I could add to these quotations, which are mainly 
from free-thinking philosophers, a great number to 
the same purport from the most famous theologians, 
but forbear, since their views are well known. 

The theologians have found the doctrine of Neces- 
sity intrenched, not alone in the Creative theory to 



FATALISM 105 

which they are committed, but also with much clear- 
ness and emphasis in the Bible. Some of these 
fatalistic texts will be found in the opening part of 
this volume. 



Ill 

THE LAW OF CAUSATION — THE ANSWER OF 
ETERNALISM TO FATALISM 



'M 



AN'S acts and thoughts are the results of 
his own nature and character." This is 
the fundamental proposition of Fatalism. " He who 
denies Necessity," the Fatalist says, " denies the 
universality of cause and effect. Man's character 
was made for him. The individual had no part in 
his own making. Whether he was to be black or 
white, large or small, philosopher or fool, male or 
female, good or bad, man or monkey, insect or vege- 
table, was determined in the act of his creation. 
Hence the cause of his acts lies beyond him ; it is 
apart from and external to him ; it is to be found 
alone in the Power or forces that created him." 

While the Creationists who support Free-will have 
not answered, and presumably cannot answer, the 
foregoing proposition, the Eternalist makes answer 
as follows : 

w * I agree with the Fatalist that the individual acts 
in accordance with his own nature and character. 
But 1 deny the assumption of Fatalism that man's 
character is made for him. I hold that the indi- 



FATALISM 107 

vidual, in his previous and continuous existence, has 
made his own character. 

" The limitations in man's character are of his 
own making. In so far as he is oppressed, degraded, 
bound, or enslaved by his own nature, he is oppressed, 
degraded, bound, or enslaved by himself. The indi- 
vidual is his own oppressor, his own tyrant, his own 
master. He is also his own redeemer, liberator, 
emancipator. 

" The individual has had beginningless time and 
opportunity for development in the past, and he will 
have endless time and opportunity in which to im- 
prove or to degrade his own character in the future. 
In all vital respects man is free. He rises as he 
wills, or descends as he wills. 

" Man acts and is acted upon. He is constantly 
acquiring new experiences, and modifying his char- 
acter for better or for worse. These modifications 
will be the causes of future actions, as his present 
actions are the results of previous modifications of 
his character. 

" The law of causation is invariable ; the chain of 
antecedents cannot be broken. The causes and ante- 
cedents of all of man's beliefs, aspirations, motives, 
and tendencies, and hence also of his thoughts and 
actions, are in himself. The individual is the archi- 
tect, repairer, builder, and maker of his own nature. 
If his soul be mean, it is the hovel which he has 
made for himself ; if it be noble, it is a palace of his 
own building." 



rv 

MAN AS A PEN THAT WRITES, AS A TRUMPET 
THAT TALKS 

VOLTAIKE, in asserting that the character of 
man is fixed by Fate, that " he is a puppet of 
Providence," that " we are only wheels to the machine 
of the world," that we " receive our ideas," carried 
the doctrine of Necessity as far perhaps as any other 
philosopher. And yet he failed to express the full 
meaning of the dogma of Fatalism. 

If Voltaire had carried his deductions a little fur- 
ther he would have expressed himself somewhat in 
this form : 

"Man acts as he must. He loves as he must, 
hates as he must, thinks as he must, lies as he must, 
murders as he must. He is noble, vile, or unclean, 
as he must be. 

" Man is as he has been made ; all things happen 
as they must happen. No one is really better or 
worse than any other, and no act is either good or 
bad, all acts being under compulsion. No one is 
entitled to praise or blame ; to honor or dishonor. 
The good are as evil as the vicious; the vicious as 
good as the best. 



FATALISM 109 

" The doctrine of Necessity does not deny man's 
freedom in part ; it denies it wholly. It does not 
deny the freedom of one man, or of a few men. It 
denies the freedom of all men — of the philosopher 
as well as of the fool, of the learned as well as of the 
ignorant. It denies my freedom as completely as it 
denies the freedom of the dullest soul in the world. 

" Without freedom man cannot reason. Man is a 
puppet, an automaton, a machine. He thinks the 
thoughts and produces the ideas which Necessity has 
forced upon him. 

" The philosophy which I and the world call mine 
is not mine. It is the product of forces antecedent 
to me, and of a Necessity which I cannot elude. 

" No thought that I utter is my thought ; for I 
am not free. I who write these words am, intellec- 
tually and morally, a slave. You who read are a 
slave. Whether these words I am writing are true 
or false, sane or foolish, I have no real means of 
knowing, since I cannot escape the influences exter- 
nal to me which control all of my acts, words, and 
thoughts. 

"If I were to express an opinion it would not be 
my opinion, since I am not free to entertain an opin- 
ion that is really my own. 

"I am as a pen that writes, as a trumpet that 
talks. No more than they can I think or reason ; 
for, like them, I am a thing without freedom." 

In denying freedom to mankind the philosophers 



110 ETERNALISM 

and theologians are compelled to deny freedom to 
themselves. 

To reason one must be free to comprehend, weigh, 
measure, and compare facts and thoughts, and to 
draw inferences and conclusions. If man is always 
under the compulsion of Necessity, he cannot reason ; 
he can only recite. 

If the Fatalists have demonstrated the truth of 
their cause, they have proved more than they would 
care to admit. For they have in that case proved 
that the very arguments with which they support 
Fatalism are predetermined, uttered under the com- 
pulsion of Necessity, and consequently that their 
own and all other reasoning is senseless and worth- 
less — that man has no more real intelligence than 
the pen or trumpet, or the cliff that echoes the sound 
of voices. 

Whoever undertakes to reason thereby asserts his 
own freedom, his own independence and kingship 
within the realm of his own soul, and thereby denies 
Theology, Materialism, and all other forms of Fatal- 
ism — and denies more particularly the theory of the 
creation of the soul of man, upon which alone the 
doctrine of Fatalism is based. 



THE FAILURE OF THE EFFORTS TO RECONCILE 
FATALISM WITH MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY 

IF man must always act under compulsion, and 
never in freedom, how can he be held justly 
accountable for his acts ? This issue has given much 
trouble to the theologians. 

Can we say that the pen is morally responsible for 
what it writes, or the press for what it prints ? A 
pen may be used by a scurrilous or truthless writer 
to give currency to his evil thoughts. But we can- 
not condemn the pen, since it has no freedom, and 
is used under compulsion. How, then, can man be 
responsible if he have no freedom, if his every act be 
under compulsion ? 

The greatest theologians in the world have striven 
to reconcile Necessity with moral accountability. 
The old have gone down to their graves, bequeathing 
the unfinished task to the young, who in turn have 
left it to their successors. And so it has come down 
to our own time incomplete, and it never will be 
finished ; for the two are irreconcilable. 

The philosophers have usually declined to make 
any effort to bring the two conflicting doctrines into 



112 ETERNALISM 

harmony, probably realizing the hopelessness of the 
task. 

Indeed three — Diderot, Schopenhauer, and Priest- 
ley — have frankly admitted that, Necessity being 
granted, moral accountability cannot be. 

Diderot, after demonstrating to his own satisfac- 
tion the doctrine of Necessity, says in a letter to 
Grimm: 

" But if there is no liberty, there is no action that merits 
either praise or blame ; neither vice nor virtue ; nothing 
that ought either to be rewarded or punished. . . . Re- 
proach others for nothing, and repent of nothing ; this is 
the first step to wisdom. Besides this, all is prejudice and 
false philosophy." 

Schopenhauer says : 

" Theism and the moral responsibility of man are in- 
compatible ; because responsibility always reverts to the 
creator of man and it is there that it has its center. Vain 
attempts have been made to make a bridge from one of 
these incompatibles to the other by means of the concep- 
tion of moral freedom ; but it always breaks down again. 
What is free must also be original." — Free-will and 
Fatalism, 83. 

Priestley, who now ranks, perhaps, as the main 
champion of Necessity, and who wrote a book on the 
subject, says: 

u In all those crimes men reproach themselves with, 
(i(»d is the agent; they are no more agents than a sword. 
A< -tions may be referred to the persons themselves as sec- 



FATALISM 113 

ondary causes, but they must also be traced to the first 
cause. Mankind at first necessarily refer their actions to 
themselves, a conviction that becomes deeply rooted, be- 
fore they begin to regard themselves as instruments in the 
hands of a superior agent. Self -applause and self-reproach 
have their origin in the narrower view, and cease when 
we refer our actions to the first great cause. The Neces- 
sitarian, believing that, strictly speaking, nothing goes 
wrong, cannot accuse himself of wrongdoing. He has, 
therefore, nothing to do with repentance, confession, or 
pardon." — Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illus- 
trated. 

Herbert Spencer says : 

" To the effects of punishments inflicted by law and 
public opinion on conduct of certain kinds, Dr. Bain 
ascribes the feeling of moral obligation. And I agree 
with him to the extent of thinking that by them is gener- 
ated the sense of compulsion which the consciousness of 
duty includes, and which the word obligation indicates." 
— Ethics, i. 126. 

From which we may infer that Mr. Spencer is un- 
able to discover any basis for moral accountability 
save in the laws and customs of men. 

Spinoza justifies the punishment of the blame- 
less: 

" The wicked, though necessarily wicked, are none the 
less on that account to be feared and destroyed. A wicked 
man may be excused, but this does not affect the treat- 
ment he must receive ; a man bitten by a mad dog is not 
blameworthy, but the people have a right to put him to 
death." 



114 ETERNALISM 

The same thought is expressed by Bain in answer 
to the Owenites, who claimed that, " since criminals 
are not the authors of their own natures, society 
should educate rather than punish them." 

Bain admits the force of this, and adds : " But 
what if this education consists mainly in Punish- 
ment?" Here Bain, who has analyzed morals more 
thoroughly perhaps than any other philosopher, as- 
sumes that injustice may be justified, a contradiction 
which is found necessarily in all moralizing based on 
the immoral theory that the individual is created. 

Four philosophers — Hobbes, Voltaire, Huxley, 
and John Fiske — have attempted to show that Ne- 
cessity does not destroy moral accountability. Their 
reasoning should receive careful attention, for we 
may be sure that they have expressed the best that 
can be said for their cause. 

Hobbes, in his discussion with Bramhall, regards 
the power of choice as in every way compatible with 
Necessity. He says : 

" In this following of one's hopes and fears consisteth 
the nature of election. So that a man may both choose 
this, and cannot but choose this ; and, consequently, choos- 
ing and Necessity are joined together." 

To this St. John, the editor of Bonn's edition of 
Locke, responds as follows : 

w ' Which is as much as to say, 'I have two legs because 
I choose to have two legs; and I choose to have two legs 
because I have two legs.' But this is like a kitten run- 



FATALISM 115 

ning after its own tail : there is a great deal of bustle, but 
no progress ; for, if one should inquire, ■ But suppose you 
should choose to have three legs ? What then ? ' Why, 
then comes the Necessitarian's universal reply, t You 
can't choose that : ' which, in plain English, is, ' You are 
a mere machine, and have no liberty of choice at all.' " 

Hobbes proceeds to say that " the Necessity of an 
action doth not make the laws that prohibit it un- 
just." To this St. John answers : 

"Which I take to be as arrant a piece of absurdity 
as can be found in print : for if it be as necessary that a 
man should thieve as that he should breathe (and there 
can be no degree in Necessity), it were as just to prohibit 
breathing as thieving." 

Again Hobbes puts the case as follows : 

" Suppose the law, on pain of death, prohibited steal- 
ing ; and that there be a man who by the strength of 
temptation is necessitated to steal, and is thereupon put 
to death; does not this punishment deter others from 
theft?" 

St. John responds with this finishing stroke : 

" What, deter men from doing what they are necessi- 
tated to do ? Would the hanging of men for touching the 
ground in walking deliver other men from the Necessity 
of touching the ground ? " 

It should be borne in mind that Hobbes, who ad- 
vances these lame propositions, ranks with the great- 
est of English philosophers. 



116 ETERNALISM 

Voltaire says : 

" It is a foolish commonplace expression, that without 
this pretended freedom of will, rewards and punishments 
are useless. Reason, and you will conclude quite the con- 
trary. 

" If, when a robber is executed, his accomplice who sees 
him suffer has the liberty of not being frightened at the 
punishment; if his will determines of itself, he will go 
from the foot of the scaffold to assassinate on the high 
road ; if struck with horror, he experiences an insurmount- 
able terror, he will no longer thieve. The punishment of 
his companion will become useful to him, and moreover 
prove to society that his will is not free." — Philosophical 
Dictionary, i. 353. 

To justify Necessity, Voltaire abandons Necessity, 
and assumes that the robber is free to thieve or not 
to thieve. St. John's answer to Hobbes is also a 
perfect answer to Voltaire : " Would the hanging of 
men for touching the ground in walking deliver other 
men from the Necessity of touching the ground ? " 

Huxley, in 1894, in the light of all the thought on 
the subject that had preceded him, made this attempt 
to prove that Necessity does not destroy account- 
ability : 

"It is said that Necessity destroys responsibility ; that, 
as it is usually put, we have no right to praise or blame 
actions that cannot be helped. . . . 

M It" A does something which puts B in a violent pas- 
sion, it is quite possible to admit that B's passion is the 



FATALISM 117 

necessary consequence of A's act, and yet to believe that 
B's fury is morally wrong, or that he ought to control it. 
In fact, a calm bystander would reason with both on the 
assumption of moral Necessity. He would say to A, 
i You were wrong in doing a thing which you knew (that 
is, of the Necessity of which you were convinced) would 
irritate B.' And he would say to B, 'You are wrong 
to give way to passion, for you know its evil effects ' — 
that is the necessary connection between yielding to pas- 
sion and evil." — Essay on Hume, 222, 223. 

The Calm Bystander says to A : " You were 
wrong in doing a thing which you knew (that is, of 
the Necessity of which you were convinced) would 
irritate B." 

It is fair that A should be permitted to ask for 
further light on the subject. 

A — Do you mean to say that I was free to act 
or not to act as I did ? 

Calm Bystander — I have said that you were 
wrong in doing it, and as the action was wrong you 
ought not to have done it. 

A — Pardon me if I say that you have not an- 
swered my question, which is, " Was I free to act? " 
If you say that I was free to act, then you deny the 
doctrine of Necessity, and affirm the doctrine of 
Free-will. If I was not free to act, if I acted under 
compulsion and Necessity, then you can blame me 
for my acts no more than you can condemn me for 
the color of my eyes or hair. 

Calm Bystander — I am authorized to speak 



118 ETERNALISM 

the words only which Mr. Huxley has put in my 
mouth. 

John Fiske says : 

" Or, as M. Littre has still more forcibly reminded us, 
the term * liberty,' as applied to volition, means the power 
of obeying the strongest motive. When that power is 
interfered with, by paralysis or insanity, or the constraint 
exercised by other persons, then we may truly say that we 
are deprived of Free-will and of responsibility. But so 
long as circumstances allow volition to follow the strong- 
est motive, then we truly say that we are free and respon- 
sible for our actions." — Cosmic Philosophy, ii. 180. 

That is, if the strongest motive given to an indi- 
vidual by his Creator be murder, then he is free and 
responsible so long as he obeys that strongest motive, 
and is not interrupted in committing murder. 

It will be observed that Hobbes, Voltaire, and 
Huxley, in order to justify moral accountability, 
have been compelled to assume, in contradiction 
with their own doctrine of Necessity, that man is 
free ; and that Fiske adopts the theory that man is 
free in doing what he is compelled to do — that com- 
pulsion is freedom. 

When the very clearest thinkers, such as Hobbes, 
Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Jonathan Edwards, Vol- 
taire, Buckle, Huxley, and Fiske, attempt to discover 
any justification for moral accountability, or for 
praise and blame for human actions, either from the 
standpoint of Necessity or of Free-will — building on 



FATALISM 119 

the assumption that the individual is created — they 
seem to pass at once into a fog in which their words 
become vague, contradictory, and meaningless. 

Only those who, like Diderot, Priestley, and Scho- 
penhauer, frankly admit that Necessity negatives 
both morality and Justice, or, like Calvin and Saint 
Paul, throw the whole responsibility upon God, and 
refuse to question him, can be really understood. 

Calvin says " that God, in predestinating from all 
eternity one part of mankind to everlasting happi- 
ness, and another to endless misery, was led to make 
this distinction by no other motive than his own 
good pleasure and Free-will." 

Saint Paul says : " Hath not the potter power 
over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel 
unto honor, and another unto dishonor?" 

The believer in Necessity has no ground left on 
which he can discuss moral accountability, or even 
morality. For morality is the question of what man 
should do, while Necessity is the doctrine that man 
does what he must do. 

What a man must do, he cannot avoid doing, and 
the question whether he could have done something 
else cannot be considered. 



VI 



MORALITY IS SECONDARY IN THEOLOGY, WHILE 
PHILOSOPHY HAS NOT YET DECIDED WHAT 
MORALITY IS 

BELIEF and conformity are vital, and morality 
is secondary, in nearly all systems of The- 
ology. Man is to be saved through forms, rites, 
ceremonies, vicarious atonements, and faith — " not 
of works, lest any man should boast." 

No important Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan 
creed admits that man can be saved by morality 
alone. A long life of unselfishness, benevolence, 
helpfulness, charity, and righteousness, alone, will 
count for nothing in the eternal reckonings of The- 
ology. 

The doctrine, found in nearly all creeds, that man 
can win eternal happiness by faith and repentance, 
is neither just nor moral. It gives no encourage- 
ment to personal independence or to freedom of 
thought. It belittles moral sacrifice and moral hero- 
ism. It declares that the highest thinker, the great- 
est philanthropist, the purest life, may earn eternal 
torture : while the vile, the depraved, the selfish, and 

the cruel may earn eternal joy in one moment of 

repentance and belief. 



FATALISM 121 

The creeds make no allowance for character-build- 
ing, which is in its nature slow — consuming days, 
years, and an eternity ; while salvation through faith 
and repentance can be secured in a second. 

As for our philosophers, they have not yet decided 
what morality is. They have been discussing the 
question for more than two thousand years, and have 
arrived at no agreement. 

Protagoras denies natural morality. Hippias de- 
nies customary morality. Gorgias holds morality 
to be merely a useful convention. Thrasymachus 
makes morality the interest of the ruler. Aristippus 
holds that there is a single end of life — pleasure. 
Epicurus agrees with Aristippus in the main. 

Hobbes holds right and wrong to be the creation 
of the state ; Locke, that moral obligation arises from 
the law — divine, civil, and social ; Hume, that rea- 
son is the " slave of the passions," that Justice is an 
" artificial " virtue, and that the motive to virtue is 
never moral obligation, but is the desire for pleasure. 

Mandeville and Helvetius hold that virtue is 
supported only by self-interest ; Bentham holds that 
utility is the foundation of morals; Hartley, that 
the moral sense is a product of association. 

Haeckel says that the feeling of duty rests " on 
the solid ground of social instinct, as we find in the 
case of all social animals." 

Herbert Spencer holds that morality consists in 
the pursuit of pleasure, and in conduct that will 



122 ETERNALISM 

preserve life ; and that the feeling of moral obliga- 
tion is a late product of the evolution of conduct. 

Huxley says (Oxford Address, 1893) that "the 
cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral 
ends," and that, while the moral sentiments have 
undoubtedly been evolved, yet since " the immoral 
sentiments have no less been evolved, there is so far 
as much natural sanction for the one as for the 
other." This last thought is an answer to Spencer's 
theory of the evolution of morality. 

If all that has been written on the principles of 
morality by our most famous philosophers could be 
transported to another inhabited planet, and there 
translated, it would be impossible for the distant 
reader to determine, through any agreement among 
our foremost thinkers, what the morality of this earth 
really is. If the verdict should be rendered in ac- 
cordance with the views of a majority of our philoso- 
phers, it would consequently be determined that 
morality has no other basis than in social conven- 
ience, custom, and the pursuit of pleasure. 

The school of philosophy which denies our com- 
mon views of morality, and affirms that pleasure is 
the chief end of life, acquired a name long ago. It 
is called Hedonism. And some of the greatest men 
in philosophy, from Aristippus to Herbert Spencer, 
have been Hedonists in a modified or a complete 
Bense. 

If our later philosophers are agreed upon anyone 



FATALISM 123 

theory concerning morals, it is this — that man has 
invented morals for the good of society. To say 
that man has invented morals for the good of society 
is as if one should say that man has invented heat 
and gravitation for the good of society. It is more 
likely that morals have made man than that man has 
made morals. 

It is true, as the philosophers claim, that morals 
are good for society, that they are in harmony with 
social instinct, with real utility, and with ultimate 
self-interest. But in saying so much the philosophers 
have touched only the surface of the problem of 
morals. They have tried morals by all tests appar- 
ently save the real and final one — this final test 
being the results upon the character of the indi- 
vidual. That is moral, I conceive, which builds 
character, whether it be pleasurable or painful, easy 
or hard ; whether it saves or kills the body. It is 
usually moral to live ; it is moral also, in a good 
cause, to die. 



VII 

MATERIALISM AND MORALITY — " THE COSMIC 
PROCESS HAS NO SORT OF RELATION TO 
MORAL ENDS" 

SCIENTIFIC thought, always more or less het- 
erodox, has become within the last forty years 
somewhat materialistic. Many of the highly edu- 
cated men and trained thinkers of the world now 
give their sanction to the theory that death ends all. 

What is the attitude of these thinkers toward the 
great question of morality ? 

The materialistic thinker knows that morality and 
Justice cannot be harmonized with his theory that 
the present physical phase of being is all there is of 
life. He perceives that some men, in accordance 
with his philosophy, are created bad, and cannot, 
without doing violence to their own natures, be good ; 
while others are born good, and cannot easily go 
wrong. 

He sees also that some are born with great ca- 
pacity for happiness, being beautiful or strong or 
good or wise, or so fortunately situated in regard 
to wealth or rank or position or health, that their 
lives are continuously pleasant, and even delightful ; 



FATALISM 125 

while others, less fortunate, but not less meritorious, 
are condemned, without reason, according to his logic, 
to lives of penury, pain, humiliation, or wretchedness, 

He is forced to admit also that the strong, the 
cunning, the greedy, and the grasping often secure 
more of the good things of this life than the just, 
the generous, and the honest. He sees goodness 
despondent in the gutters, and vice triumphant in 
its palaces. 

The Materialist who reasons on these lines is 
forced to the conclusion — in harmony with the logic 
of Fatalism — that Justice has no existence, and that 
our conventional theories of morality are absurd. 
But he seldom expresses this thought, knowing that 
it is likely to be misunderstood, and to form the basis 
for an unjust accusation that he is an apologist of 
immorality. Some, however, are courageous enough 
to follow their logic to its conclusion. 

Goldwin Smith discusses this issue with clearness 
and frankness : 

" Yet it seems impossible to doubt that morality, per- 
sonal and social, but especially social, has hitherto largely 
rested, in ordinary minds, on a foundation of religious 
belief, including the belief in another life and in future 
rewards and punishments. That foundation is now mani- 
festly giving way. Literature teems with the proof of 
this. So does the conversation of the educated classes. So 
does even apologetic Theology, the attitude of which is 
generally one of concession and retreat. . . . 

" The authors of systems of moral philosophy have 



126 ETERNALISM 

sought to discover some intellectual principle from which 
all moral rules could be logically deduced and the appre- 
hension of which would constrain all men to be moral. 
But the question remains, why men who do not like to 
be moral, as many men do not, are to sacrifice their pro- 
pensities to a logical deduction from an intellectual prin- 
ciple. . . . 

"If we make of pleasure our ethical criterion, how are 
we to distinguish between one kind of pleasure and 
another ; between the pleasure of eating the bread which 
is honestly earned and the pleasure of eating the bread 
which is stolen ? . . . 

" But the murderer who, by his cunning, escapes the 
gallows, and perhaps comes into the enjoyment of wealth 
out of which the life which he has taken would have kept 
him — why should he feel any more remorse than he would 
have felt if he had taken the life of a dog ? Let us sup- 
pose, for instance, that the life of a child stands between 
a needy man and a great estate ; that he puts an end to 
the child's life in such a way as to escape detection, enters 
into the estate, lives a life of ease and affluence instead of 
struggling for bread, spends his money well and enjoys 
the good-will of the people among whom he lives ; why is 
he to feel remorse, or, if he has a twinge of it, why is he 
not to repress it as he would any other unpleasant emotion 
or bodily pain ? . . . 

" Myriads of human beings, through no fault of their 
own, have lived in misery, perhaps in cruel slavery, and 
died in pain, not a few in agony. Myriads have been born 
to primeval savagery, without hope of moral civilization. 
The lot of myriads has been cast in such periods as that 
of the fall of the Roman Empire or the Thirty Years' 



FATALISM 127 

War. If for these there is no compensation, how can we 
believe in a just and benevolent administration of the uni- 
verse ? Dogmatic and historical Christianity is far from 
relieving us of the difficulty, since it places all the genera- 
tions before Christ, and the whole heathen world down to 
this day, out of the pale at least of covenanted salva- 
tion. . . . 

" The Marquis of Steyne is an organism, and, like all 
other organisms, so long as he succeeds in maintaining 
himself against competing organisms, is able to make good 
his title to existence under the law of natural selection. 
He has his pleasures ; they are not those of a Saint Paul, 
or a Shakespeare, or a Wilberforce, but they are his. 
They make him happy, according to the only measure of 
happiness which he can conceive ; and if he is cautious, 
as a sagacious voluptuary will be, they need not diminish 
his vitality, they may even increase it both in duration 
and intensity, though they may play havoc with the wel- 
fare of a number of victims and dependents. He may 
successively seduce a score of women without bad conse- 
quences to himself. Why is he doing wrong ? In the 
name of what do you peremptorily summon him to return 
to the path of virtue ? In the name of altruistic pleasure ? 
He happens to be one of those organisms which are not 
capable of it. In the name of a state of society which is 
to come into existence long after he has moldered to dust 
in the family mausoleum of the Gaunts ? His reply will 
be that as a sensible man he lives for the present, not for 
a future in which he will have no share. . . . 

" Mr. Cotter Morison, a man himself of moral sensibility, 
as well as the highest cultivation, said that the sooner the 
idea of moral responsibility was got rid of the better it 



128 ETERNALISM 

would be for society and moral education, and that while 
virtue might, and possibly would, bring happiness to the 
virtuous man, to the immoral and the selfish virtue would 
probably be the most distasteful or even painful thing in 
their experience, while vice would give them unmitigated 
pleasure. His method of moral reform is the elimination 
or suppression of the bad. But if the bad happen to be 
the stronger or the more cunning, what is to prevent their 
eliminating or suppressing the good ? What is to prevent 
their doing this, not only with a clear conscience, but with 
a glow of self -approbation ? . . . 

"If no divine command for the practice of virtue can 
be shown, if no assurance of the virtuous man's reward, 
such as Paley assumes, can be given, moral philosophy 
must, it would appear, be content simply to take the obser- 
vation of human nature as its basis, and to build its system 
on the natural desires of man, offering them such satisfac- 
tion as is consistent with the welfare of the community 
and the race." — Guesses at the Riddle of Existence, 
191-244. 

Leslie Stephen says : 

" There is no absolute coincidence between virtue and 
happiness. I cannot prove that it is always prudent to 
act rightly, or that it is always happiest to be virtu- 
ous. . . . 

" The path of duty does not coincide with the path of 
happiness. . . . 

" The virtuous men may be the very salt of the earth, 
and yet the discharge of a function socially necessary may 
involve their own misery. . . . 

u A great moral and religious teacher has often been a 



FATALISM 12 9 

martyr, and we are certainly not entitled to assume either 
that he was a fool for his pains or, on the other hand, that 
the highest conceivable degree of virtue can make martyr- 
dom agreeable. . . . 

"In a gross society, where the temperate man is an 
object of ridicule and necessarily cut off from participation 
in the ordinary pleasures of life, he may find his moral 
squeamishness conducive to misery ; the just and honor- 
able man is made miserable in a corrupt society where the 
social combinations are simply bands of thieves, and his 
high spirit only awakens hatred ; and the benevolent is 
tortured in proportion to the strength of his sympathies in 
a society where they meet with no return, and where he 
has to witness cruelty triumphant, and mercy ridiculed as 
weakness. . . . 

"Every reformer who breaks with the world, though 
for the world's good, must naturally expect much pain, 
and must be often tempted to think that peace and har- 
mony are worth buying, even at the price of condoning 
evil. . . . 

" ' Be good if you would be happy ' seems to be the 
verdict even of worldly prudence ; but it adds, in an 
emphatic aside, ' Be not too good.' " — Conclusion Science 
of Ethics. 

Herbert Spencer says : 

" It is not for nothing that he [man] has in him these 
sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. 
He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is 
not an accident, but a product of the time. He must 
remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is 
a parent of the future ; and that his thoughts are as chil- 



130 ETERNALISM 

dren born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. 
He, like every other man, may properly consider himself 
as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the 
Unknown Cause ; and when the Unknown Cause pro- 
duces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to 
profess and act out that belief" — First Principles, 
125, 126. 

Mr. Spencer, being a Necessitarian, holds that man 
must act in accordance with his own nature, and 
hence we may infer from the foregoing quotation 
that man should not be condemned if he " act out 
that belief" which is given to him, whether the 
belief be moral or immoral. 

Quoting further from Mr. Spencer : 

" And here let me repeat a truth which I have elsewhere 
insisted upon, that just as food is rightly taken only when 
taken to appease hunger, while the having to take it when 
there is no inclination implies deranged physical state ; so, 
a good act or act of duty is rightly done only if done in 
satisfaction of immediate feeling, and if done with a view 
to ultimate results, in this world or another world, implies 
an imperfect moral state." — Ethics, ii. 450. 

A good act, inspired by the motive of building 
character, would be " done with a view to ultimate 
results, in this world or another world," and would 
consequently imply, in literal accordance with the 
view of Mr. Spencer, " an imperfect moral state." 

Mr. Spencer's general theory of morals, expressed 
as follows, is in complete accord with the Hedonists : 



FATALISM 131 

" Thus there is no escape from the admission that in 
calling good the conduct which subserves life, and bad the 
conduct which hinders or destroys it, and in so implying 
that life is a blessing and not a curse, we are inevitably 
asserting that conduct is good or bad, according as its total 
effects are pleasurable or painful." — Ethics, i. 28. 

Haeckel says : 

" But in the new, as in the older, period the great strug- 
gle for existence went on in its eternal fluctuation, with 
no trace of a moral order" — Riddle of the Universe, 272. 

It remains for an American Materialist, Van 
Buren Denslow, to carry the theory of Materialism 
to its logical conclusion in the denial of any real 
basis in Nature for morality. He says : 

" It is generally believed to be moral to tell the truth, 
and immoral to lie. And yet it would be difficult to prove 
that Nature prefers the true to the false. Everywhere she 
makes the false impression first, and only after years, or 
thousands of years, do we become able to detect her in her 
lies. . . . Nature endows almost every animal with the 
faculty of deceit in order to aid it in escaping from the 
brute force of its superiors. Why, then, should not man 
be endowed with the faculty of lying when it is to his 
interest to appear wise concerning matters of which he is 
ignorant ? Lying is often a refuge to the weak, a step- 
ping-stone to power, a ground of reverence toward those 
who live by getting credit for knowing what they do not 
know. No one doubts that it is right for the maternal 
partridge to feign lameness, a broken wing or leg, in order 
to conceal her young in flight, by causing the pursuer to 



132 ETERNALISM 

suppose he can more easily catch her than her offspring. 
From whence, then, in Nature, do we derive the fact that 
a human being may not properly tell an untruth with the 
same motive ? Our early histories, sciences, poetries, and 
theologies are all false, yet they comprehend by far the 
major part of human thought. Priesthoods have ruled 
the world by deceiving our tender souls, and yet they com- 
mand our most enduring reverence. Where, then, do we 
discover that any law of universal Nature prefers truth to 
falsehood, any more than oxygen to nitrogen, or alkalies 
to salts ? So habituated have we become to assume that 
truth-telling is a virtue, that nothing is more difficult than 
to tell how we came to assume it, nor is it easy of proof 
that it is a virtue in an unrestricted sense. What would 
be thought of the military strategist who made no feints, 
of the advertisement that contained no lie, of the business 
man whose polite suavity covered no falsehood ? 

" Inasmuch as all moral rules are in the first instance 
impressed by the strong, the dominant, the matured, and 
the successful upon the weak, the crouching, the infantile, 
and the servile, it would not be strange if a close analysis 
and a minute historical research should concur in proving 
that all moral rules are doctrines established by the strong 
for the government of the weak. It is invariably the 
strong who require the weak to tell the truth, and always 
to promote some interest of the strong. . . . 

" ' Thou shalt not steal ' is a moral precept invented by 
the strong, the matured, the successful, and by them im- 
pressed upon the weak, the infantile, and the failures in 
life's struggle, as all criminals are. . . . Universal society 
might be pictured, for the illustration of this feature of 
the moral code, as consisting of two sets of swine, one of 



FATALISM 133 

which is in the clover and the other is out. The swine 
that are in the clover grunt, ' Thou shalt not steal ; put 
up the bars.' The swine that are out of the clover grunt, 
1 Did you make the clover ? let down the bars.' ' Thou 
shalt not steal ' is a maxim impressed by property holders 
upon non-property holders. It is not only conceivable, 
but it is absolute verity, that a sufficient deprivation of 
property, and force, and delicacy of temptation, would 
compel every one who utters it to steal if he could get 
an opportunity. In a philosophic sense, therefore, it is 
not a universal, but a class, law; its prevalence and 
obedience indicate that the property holders rule society, 
which is itself an index of advance toward civilization. 
No one would say that if a lion lay gorged with his excessive 
fea '-. amidst the scattered carcass of a deer, and a jaguar 
or a hyena stealthily bore away a haunch thereof, the act 
of the hyena was less virtuous than that of the lion. How 
does the case of two bushmen, between whom the same 
incident occurs, differ from that of the two quadrupeds ? 
Each is doing that which tends in the highest degree to 
his own preservation, and it may be assumed that the 
party against whom the spoliation is committed is not 
injured at all by it. . . . Having control of the forces 
of society, the strong can always legislate, or order, or 
wheedle, or preach, or assume other people's money and 
land out of their possession into their own, by methods 
which are not known as stealing, since instead of violating 
the law they inspire and create the law. But if the under 
dog in the social fight runs away with a bone in violation 
of superior force, the top dog runs after him bellowing, 
1 Thou shalt not steal/ and all the other top dogs unite in 
bellowing, ' This is divine law and not dog law ; ' the 



134 ETERNALISM 

verdict of the top dog so far as law, religion, and other 
forms of brute force are concerned, settles the question. 
But philosophy will see in this contest of antagonistic 
forces a mere play of opposing elements, in which larceny 
is an incident of social weakness and unfitness to survive, 
just as debility and leprosy are ; and would as soon as- 
sume a divine command, 'Thou shalt not break out in 
boils and sores,' to the weakling or leper, as one of ' Thou 
shalt not steal' to the failing struggler for subsistence. 
So far as the irresistible promptings of Nature may be 
said to constitute a divine law, there are really two laws. 
The law to him who will be injured by stealing is, ' Thou 
shalt not steal,' meaning thereby, ' Thou shalt not suffer 
another to steal from you.' The law to him who cannot 
survive without stealing is simply, ' Thou shalt, in steal- 
ing, avoid being detected.' 

"So the laws forbidding unchastity were framed by 
those who, in the earlier periods of civilization, could 
afford to own women, for the protection of their property 
rights in them, against the poor who could not. . . . We 
do not mean by this course of reasoning to imply that the 
strong in society can or ought to be governed by the weak ; 
that is neither possible, nor, if possible, would it be any 
improvement. We only assert that moral precepts are 
largely the selfish maxims expressive of the will of the 
ruling forces in society, those who have health, wealth, 
knowledge, and power, and are designed wholly for their 
own protection and the maintenance of their power. They 
represent the view of the winning side, in the struggle for 
subsistence, while the true interior law of Nature would 
represent a varying combat in which two laws would ap- 
pear, viz. : that known as the moral or majority law, and 



FATALISM 135 

that known as the immoral or minority law, which com- 
mands a violation of the other.' ' — Modern Thinkers, 
240-246. 

Mr. Denslow has taken the position openly which 
all Materialists will in time be forced to maintain, 
which is hinted at in the ethical philosophy of Her- 
bert Spencer ; in the quotation from Huxley, " The 
cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends ; " 
and in Haeckel's statement that there " is no trace 
of a moral order." 



vin 

SCIENCE DEMONSTRATES THAT SOME ARE BORN 
VICIOUS AND OTHERS GOOD — THE PLEA OF 
THE DEGENERATE 

" A S there are men born physically cripples and 
-Za^ intellectually idiots, so there are some who 
are moral cripples and idiots," says Huxley in his 
letter to Clayton, dated November 5, 1892. 

"In general," says Lombroso, "born criminals 
have projecting ears, thick hair, a thin beard, pro- 
jecting frontal eminences, enormous jaws, a square 
and projecting chin, large cheek bones, and frequent 
gesticulation. It is, in short, a type resembling the 
Mongolian, or sometimes the Negroid." 

A. Draehms says : 

" Mr. Dugdale has gathered, with remarkable patience 
and labor, the records of the celebrated Juke family, whose 
antecedents in New York were traced back through the 
genealogies of 540 persons in seven generations and 169 
related by marriage or cohabitation, to one i Margaret 'ail 
her drunken husband, of which 709 persons 280 were pau- 
pers ; 140 were criminals and prostitutes, encompassing 
1 1 ~> different kinds of crime, including highway robbery 
and seven murders, incurring a direct cost estimated at 
$1,308,000, to Bay nothing of indirect damages to society 
which were incalculable. . . . 



FATALISM 137 

" The fact is incontrovertible that the moral suscepti- 
bilities are inborn in varying degrees in different indi- 
viduals." — The Criminal. 

Buchner says : 

" These [medical] researches have proved in the case 
of many criminals, if not of all, that from the very first 
they have been, as it were, doomed or predestined to 
crime by a faulty or imperfect organization of mind or 
body. . . . 

" Professor Benedikt of Vienna has arrived at a similar 
result ; having had an opportunity of studying the forma- 
tion of the brain of a number of persons convicted of very 
serious crimes, he pronounces it to have been defective in 
every one of them. More especially were the important 
convolutions of the surface of the brain developed to a 
strikingly diminutive degree, and the posterior cerebral 
lobes, the seat of emotion and of moral sensitiveness, were 
so deficient in development and so dwarfed as actually 
to leave part of the cerebellum bare. 

" The same conclusion has been arrived at by Dr. Bor- 
dier of Paris. Having examined the brains of thirty-six 
executed criminals, he found that in almost all of them 
the parietal lobes were excessively developed at the cost 
of the frontal, a fact which points to a low grade of intel- 
ligence together with a stronger tendency to violence." — 
Force and Matter, 376. 

Thus does science confirm that which common 
sense well knows — that some souls are born vicious 
and others good, some dull and others bright. 

Let us assume that a man born vicious, accepting 
the theory of Creationism, were to defend himself 



138 ETERNALISM 

against the moralists. He would doubtless express 
himself somewhat in this way: 

" As I am, I was made. I was created cruel, lust- 
ful, and revengeful. As for a conscience, I know 
nothing of it. Perhaps God or Nature gave you a 
conscience ; I received none. 

" You say that I ought to be kind and moderate 
and just. I answer first that I cannot ; it is impossi- 
ble for me to change my nature. Can I change the 
gray matter in my brain, or the shape of my skull ? 

" The best that I could do, and most of my kind 
do this, would be to turn hypocrite — to pretend to 
conform to your moral laws to gain better opportuni- 
ties for violating them secretly and with impunity. 

" And, second, I answer that I ought not to be 
kind, moderate, and just, for I was created for other 
purposes. A gun is made to shoot, a dagger to 
strike, poison to kill. Do you say to the gun, You 
should not shoot? to the dagger, You should not 
strike ? to the poison, You should not kill ? 

" The gun, the dagger, and the poison, if they had 
been created with a little intelligence, as I have been, 
would laugh as I do at your childish moral philoso- 

i )n y. 

" I would be rebellious and disrespectful toward 
my Maker if I were to attempt to be other than what 
I am; and you are rebellious and disrespectful in 
advising me that God or Nature blundered in cre- 
ating me, How dare you raise your puny and im- 



FATALISM 139 

pious voices against the vast scheme of existence of 
which I am a product as legitimate as any philoso- 
pher, priest, or preacher ? 

" Why are you moralists ? Because you were cre- 
ated moralists ; because morality is in your brains 
and blood ; because you can't help preaching and 
moralizing ; because you take pleasure in dwelling 
upon the problem of sin, and more especially upon 
the sins of others. 

" As for me, I was created immoral, and I take 
pleasure only in immorality. I enjoy a prize fight. 
It is rare sport for me to go gunning for helpless 
animals. Perhaps you know nothing of the keen 
delight of witnessing the agony of dying game. 

" I enjoy dominion over the weak and helpless and 
dull. What a fool I would be to toil at mean labor 
when I have been endowed with the ability to relieve 
others, through various intelligent ways, of some of 
their surplus wealth. 

" I pity you when I think that you know nothing 
of the pleasures of debauchery. Your cant about 
virtue as the source of happiness wearies me. In 
your dull lives, you never discover what real happi- 
ness is. 

" I read with envy of the rare sport which, accord- 
ing to the newspaper reports, some of our allies had 
at Tientsin, where they tossed live Chinese babies 
back and forth on the points of bayonets. That was 
a sight worth seeing ! 



140 ETERNALISM 

" You seem shocked. Well, who made the savages 
of Tientsin, and all of the other bloodthirsty mon- 
sters, as you would call them, that have lived and 
are yet living ? The same Maker that made you. 

" How do you know that you are really any better 
than they ? What did you do before you were cre- 
ated to make yourself moral ? You did nothing ; for 
you did not exist before you were created. What 
did I do to earn what you call my immoral nature ? 
I did nothing. It was given to me by my Maker. 
You are entitled to no praise for what you are, and 
I to no blame for what I am. 

" You say that I am a moral degenerate. If so, 
who made me a moral degenerate ? The same Power 
that made you so wise and good. Do you scorn me ? 
Then you scorn the Power that made me and made 
you. 

" If death ends all, then I would be a fool if I did 
not get all of the pleasure that I could out of this 
one life. It is my first, last, and only chance to enjoy 
myself. 

" If, on the other hand, it should turn out that the 
preachers are right, and I am called after death to 
the bar of God, I shall not fear the consequences. I 
shall say, ' Here I am as you made me. I have lived 
in perfect harmony with the character and nature 
that you gave to me. I have not attempted to im- 
prove upon your handiwork, believing it to be good.' 

kk If God be just, he will say that I am right. 



FATALISM 141 

Having made me vicious, he will not punish me for 
being vicious. If he be unjust — well, vicious as I 
am, I do not dare to utter the blasphemy that the 
Ruler and Creator of this great Universe is unjust." 
If the reader will attempt to frame an answer to 
the reasoning of this degenerate, he will then com- 
prehend fully, if he has not already done so, the diffi- 
culties under which the theologians and philosophers 
have labored in attempting to reconcile morality with 
the theory that man's character is made for him. 



IX 



THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF MAN— "A CHALK- 
MARK ON THE BLACKBOARD OF TIME " 

STILL another phase of Fatalism, which pictures 
man as something wholly ephemeral and insig- 
nificant, cannot be ignored. 
John Burroughs says : 

" We are like figures which some great demonstrator 
draws upon the blackboard of Time. A problem is to be 
solved, without doubt ; what the problem is, we, the figures, 
cannot know and do not need to know ; all we know is 
that sooner or later we shall be sponged off the board and 
other figures take our places, and the demonstration go 
on." — The Light of Day, Preface. 

Voltaire says : 

" Sarpedon was born at the moment when it was neces- 
sary that he should be born, and could not be born at any 
other ; he could not die elsewhere than before Troy ; he 
could not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia ; his body 
must, in the appointed time, produce vegetables, which 
must change into the substance of some of the Lycians ; 
his heirs must establish a new order of things in his 
states; that new order must influence neighboring king- 
doms : thence must result a new arrangement in war and 



FATALISM 143 

in peace with the neighbors of Lycia. So that, from link 
to link, the destiny of the whole earth depended on the 
death of Sarpedon, which depended on the elopement of 
Helen, which had a necessary connection with the mar- 
riage of Hecuba, which, ascending to higher events, was 
connected with the origin of things. 

u Had any one of these occurrences been ordered other- 
wise, the result would have been a different universe." — 
Philosophical Dictionary, i. 171. 

In a tropical jungle, a million or more years ago, 
a flea-bite awakened a sleeping ape, which thereby 
saw and mated with a female. If either of these had 
failed to live to maturity, or had not been inclined to 
the other at a certain time and moment, then their 
descendant, Voltaire, according to his theory, could 
never have existed. 

And the existence of Voltaire, in accordance with 
his logic, is due not alone to the contact of these pro- 
genitors, but it is also inextricably entangled with 
the flea which awakened one of them, with the 
minute details in the lives of a good part of all pre- 
ceding fleadom, with the life antecedent to the flea 
and the apes, back to the origin of life on this earth, 
and to other happenings more or less insignificant, 
and in numbers beyond computation. 

AU of which would determine that the individual 
is of as little weight and import as a dewdrop, a dust- 
speck, the moonshine on a blade of grass, or Mr. 
Burroughs's chalk-mark. 

That the physical body of Voltaire, and of all 



144 ETERNALISM 

other men, may be traced to trifling antecedents, is 
true. But I do not believe that the soul of Voltaire, 
" the intellectual emperor of Europe," owed its exist- 
ence to a flea-bite, or to any other happening, great 
or insignificant. 

A man is at sea alone in a boat. The man and 
the boat are intimately associated and mutually de- 
pendent for the time ; yet we do not assume that 
they are one and inseparable. The man is older 
than the boat, and his connection with it is tempo- 
rary. His antecedents run on lines far removed 
from the antecedents of the boat. The wood in the 
boat may have come from Oregon, its nails from 
Pittsburg, and the man from Norway. 

And so the antecedents of the physical body of 
Voltaire may have come from one direction, and 
the antecedents of the soul of Voltaire — of the real 
Voltaire — from another direction. 



THE DOGMA OF FATALISM BELITTLES AND 
ENSLAVES MANKIND 

REASONING is a science. It has its laws 
which we must follow. Eight premises bring 
right conclusions, and wrong premises bring wrong 
conclusions. One who builds on a wrong theory- 
will fail to reach a right result, as one who travels 
on a wrong road will fail to reach the right place. 

Theologians and philosophers, starting with the 
theory that man's character is made for him, reach 
the conclusion inevitably that he is a chalk-mark on 
the blackboard of eternity, an insignificant atom, a 
thing without freedom in thought, motive, or action. 

It is a serious thing thus to belittle, emasculate, 
and enslave mankind. We have been taught to look 
with horror upon chattel slavery, but what shall we 
say of this blacker form of vassalage — the thraldom 
of the mind, the slavery of the soul of man ? 

For the chattel slave there is hope. We have 
seen him liberated ; seen him rise to the dignity of 
free manhood. But the slave of Fate can never be 
set free. The captive of Necessity can never escape 
from bondage. 



146 ETERNALISM 

How shall we force ourselves to think of the acts 
of Lincoln as the acts of a slave ; of the Declara- 
tion of Independence as coming from the hand of a 
slave ; of the thoughts of Emerson and Goethe and 
Shakespeare as the thoughts of slaves ? 

Why should we indulge in the illusions of political 
freedom, if all men are incapable of one free act or 
free thought ? Why do we say to the child, " Try, 
aspire, be good," if the child is, and forever must 
be, a slave ? 

Fatalism, if it could be believed, would kill every 
aspiration of man. He who cannot achieve, cannot 
aspire. Only the free can aspire. 

If the doctrine of Fatalism be true, our language 
does not express the truth concerning anything ; our 
poetry is foolish, our history senseless, our whole 
literature worthless and crazy — for it constantly 
commends good men and condemns bad ones, assum- 
ing that man is a free moral agent, that he is ac- 
countable, that he can act, think, and reason, in 
freedom. 

Our systems of law and Justice are systems of 
injustice, if Fatalism be true — for they, too, are 
based on the assumption that man is free and ac- 
countable. The philosophy of Necessity can inspire 
no real poetry, no noble thought, no eloquence, no 
heroism — Cor these can be produced only in freedom. 

If the doctrine of Fatalism be true, then we live 
in a world of illusions, compared with which the hal- 
lucinations of fever would he as sober reality. 



FATALISM 147 

The logic of theological Fatalism convicts God of 
being the author and instigator of every crime com- 
mitted by man — of every meanness, deception, lie, 
theft, murder, cruelty, and torture, in the Universe. 
The logic of philosophical Fatalism also acquits man 
of all sin, and places the responsibility on Nature or 
on God. 

These two phases of the one misbegotten dogma 
of Fatalism slander God and Nature, deny morality, 
moral accountability, and Justice, and degrade man 
by making him a puppet, an automaton, and a bub- 
ble, possessed of the insane delusion that he is free. 

Fatalism reduces man to insignificance and noth- 
ingness. It annihilates him mentally and morally — 
not in death, but in life. 

It is impossible for mankind to accept the philos- 
ophy of Fatalism. It does violence to all of our 
natural feelings. Before it can be accepted, human 
nature itself must be changed. 

No man — not even the philosopher who has dem- 
onstrated the truth of Fatalism to his own satisfac- 
tion — has been able to really accept it in his natural 
thoughts, actions, and feelings ; for it is of record 
that no philosopher of Fatalism ever failed to com- 
mend men for their good actions, and to condemn 
them for their evil actions, just as if they had been 
free. 

It would be easy to prove from the writings of the 
fatalistic philosophers that they have labored con- 



148 ETERNALISM 

stantly under the belief — or, from their standpoint, 
the delusion — that they and all other men are free. 

The doctrine of Necessity has made little impres- 
sion upon mankind. It has convinced no one ; not 
even its authors. But the reasoning by which the 
philosophers and theologians have sustained the doc- 
trine of Necessity is absolutely correct, if the theory 
that man's character is made for him — upon which 
alone the dogma of Fatalism is based — be true. 

If the doctrine of the creation of the soul of man 
is true, then the doctrine of Fatalism is true. All 
of the arts and resources of reasoning have failed to 
separate them. Fatalism can be denied and refuted 
only by denying and refuting the theory of Creation- 
ism, upon which Fatalism is grounded. 



XI 



THE DECAY OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY — 
OUR POETS ARE OUR CLEAREST THINKERS 

THE Creative theory has been the blunder of 
the ages. It has set man wrong in all of his 
eternal reckonings. It is as though the whole of our 
arithmetical calculations were based on the presump- 
tion that one and one make three. All mathematical 
reckonings would consequently be wrong in all de- 
tails, in all stages, and in all results. 

Perhaps the most serious results of the acceptance 
of the Creative theory have been the consequent 
perversion and degradation of the reasoning powers 
of mankind. 

Almost all learning and theological and philo- 
sophical speculations, in Europe and America, have 
been bent, twisted, and distorted, to sustain the the- 
ory of the creation of man, and to prove that to be 
just which is plainly unjust, and that to be moral 
which is plainly immoral. 

The vast literature of the Theology of Creation- 
ism is an almost interminable record of sophistry in 
which learned men have attempted to reconcile the 
irreconcilable, and to bring truth into harmony with 
fiction. 



150 ETERNALISM 

These theological discussions have now practically- 
ceased ; not because they have arrived at a conclu- 
sion, which is impossible, but because mankind have 
grown weary of the fruitless and barren controversy ; 
and because, science and reason having undermined 
the foundations of the Theology of Creationism, that 
monstrous delusion now sways and topples to its fall. 

Nor is the failure of Theology more pronounced 
than the failure of philosophy, in so far as philosophy 
touches the higher problems of human life. 

" Since the year 1840," says Dr. Vaihinger, " there 
has been hopeless philosophical anarchy in Ger- 
many." 

" We live," says Max Miiller, " in an age of phys- 
ical discovery, and of complete philosophical prostra- 
tion." 

"Philosophy has hitherto been a failure," says 
Schopenhauer. 

Windelband, in the conclusion to his " History of 
Philosophy," speaks of " the rapid decline of meta- 
physical interest and metaphysical production " in 
recent times. 

Erdmann also, in the conclusion to his " History 
of Philosophy," says that "the philosophical interest 
has fallen into the background," which is " a symp- 
tom of philosophical decrepitude." 

" A sense of universal illusion ordinarily follows 
the reading of metaphysics : and is strong in propor- 
tion as the argument has appeared conclusive," says 
Herbert Spencer. 



FATALISM 151 

It is now admitted almost universally among think- 
ing men that philosophy, so far as it deals in first 
principles — with the whence and whither of man, 
and with the foundations of morality — has been a 
failure. 

All of the philosophy which has been built upon 
the theory that the individual is created could be 
obliterated without loss to mankind. It is a vast 
system of logical quibbles, of dreary platitudes, of 
error hidden in mystification, of barren thoughts 
lost in a tropical jungle of unusual words. But it 
will not be expunged. It will stand as the record 
perhaps of the strangest misconception that has been 
entertained by intelligent men. 

It has solved nothing. It has not even been able 
to establish on grounds of reason what all men know 
— that man is free! It has made no impression 
upon the common sense of the world. 

No good lesson, no inspiration toward noble and 
lofty conduct, no light upon the meaning of exist- 
ence, no help in sorrow and trouble, can be drawn 
from its dismal theories. 

It would seem almost as if the philosophy of Fatal- 
ism were a comedy in which learned men have 
amused themselves by trifling with the most sacred 
things of life — using a language unintelligible in the 
main to plain people. 

Our poets have been our clearest thinkers ; for 
they have sung ceaselessly of Truth and Eight and 



152 ETERNALISM 

Honor and Freedom. They have not belittled 
man. 

The object of life is not to secure pleasure, as most 
of our philosophers have taught, but to develop man- 
hood and womanhood — to build character. 

Those who have sought to analyze morals and to 
regulate life in harmony with the soulless dogma of 
Fatalism should throw aside their cold and barren 
theories, and seek knowledge from the women who 
teach plain, every-day morals to their children, from 
the common run of men who are constantly weighing 
questions of Justice, and even from the poor and 
unlettered who know that right is right and wrong 
is wrong. 



XII 

THERE IS NO ERROR IN THE INSTINCTIVE LOGIC 
AND PHILOSOPHY OF MANKIND 

HOW shall we explain this strange contradic- 
tion — that, while the thought of the learned 
concerning Fatalism is to a large degree unsound, 
the common thought of the world concerning the 
same problem appears to be sound ? 

This important question is usually answered by a 
reference to the proverbial superiority of common 
sense; and this answer is correct to an extent, 
though it fails to do full justice to the subject. Com- 
mon sense is usually, though not invariably, correct. 

Mankind have a deeper and more accurate sense 
even than common sense. This deeper sense is mani- 
fest in all stages of human development, so far as 
the record is open to us, and in the lower forms of 
life. I refer, of course, to instinct. 

There are, I am informed, only two or three cases 
known to scientific observers in which instinct lures 
or misleads ; and these are so exceptional, and out 
of harmony with all other cases, that they are recog- 
nized as survivals of instincts which were originally 
beneficial. Science recognizes that instinct is the 



154 ETERNALISM 

most infallible, as it is the most marvelous, of all 
guides of action. 

" An instinct," says Sir William Hamilton, " is an 
agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work 
of intelligence and knowledge." 

Instinct produces effects "which transcend the 
general intelligence or experience of the creature," 
says the Century Dictionary. 

" Instincts are as important as corporeal structures 
for the welfare of each species," says Darwin. 

Wundt regards human life as " permeated through 
and through with instinctive action, determined in 
part, however, by intelligence and volition." 

Instinct is vital truth inbred in plants, insects, 
beasts, man. It is not untrue, misleading, deceptive. 
It guards, protects, preserves, uplifts, saves. It is as 
important, and as true, in man as in the lower life. 

Nearly all men hold two conflicting beliefs con- 
cerning religious questions — the religious questions 
being, as I have shown, the moral questions. One 
of these conflicting beliefs is the conventional or 
local belief — the belief that is taught, that is based 
on tradition, or revered authority — as Mohammed- 
anism, Buddhism, Christianity. 

The other belief is not conventional or local, nor 
is it based on tradition or authority. It is the univer- 
sal belief of mankind; it is an instinctive and un- 
taught belief. It is usually in conflict, to some 
extent at least, with the local or conventional belief. 



FATALISM 155 

Creationism is the conventional, formal, and local 
belief of our own people. It is that which has been 
taught to us. The almost universal bias of our people 
in favor of Creationism is unquestionably due to 
Bible authority, as the bias of the Hindoos in favor 
of preexistence is due to their revered authorities. 
It is difficult for any one to abandon so completely 
the formal belief into which he is born that no ves- 
tige of its influence remains in his mind. 

On the other hand, our people, and all other 
people of whom we have accurate knowledge, hold 
an instinctive and untaught belief which contradicts 
Creationism. This contradictory belief is the faith 
in man's freedom and accountability, which is shown 
in our universal commendation of good actions and 
condemnation of evil ones. The evidence of this 
instinctive and universal belief, which denies Cre- 
ationism, is found also in the history and literature 
of the human race, in man's customs, usages, tradi- 
tions, and laws, and in the details of man's own 
consciousness and of his relations to others. In the 
instinctive philosophy and Eeligion of mankind is 
found no trace of Creationism or Fatalism. 

Our philosophers and theologians have based their 

, fatalistic reasoning and speculations upon the con- 

' ventional belief of our people in Creationism, ignoring 

the instinctive and universal belief which is adverse 

to Creationism. Applying the rules of logic to the 

theory of Creationism, our learned men have pursued 



156 ETERNALISM 

their reasoning to results so inconsistent and im- 
moral that they have usually been appalled by their 
own conclusions. If they had built upon a broader 
basis — upon the instinctive belief of all men, includ- 
ing themselves — they would have reached rational 
conclusions wholly in harmony with morality and 
Justice. 

The common man, on the other hand, is not 
usually a logician, though he is no stranger to logic. 
His logic, like his belief, is instinctive. He holds 
it in common with the rest of mankind. Instinctive 
logic, touching moral questions, builds upon instinc- 
tive belief. It denies all fatalistic premises, and 
reaches, consequently, no fatalistic conclusions. In- 
stinctive logic reconciles all things with Justice, as 
is shown elsewhere in my inquiry concerning the 
actual meaning of Religion. I doubt that the instinc- 
tive logic of mankind contains an error, a false pre- 
mise or a false conclusion — for instinct, we should 
remember, is true ; it does not mislead or deceive. 

When authority is at war with instinctive belief, 
it is authority that must succumb finally, as in the 
case of Confucius and the authors of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, who, without changing the resistless cur- 
rents of instinctive belief, disputed the survival of 
the soul. 

The poets have been our clearest thinkers on moral 
questions, because they have been the truest inter- 
preters of instinctive belief. They are students of 



FATALISM 157 

human nature, rather than of authority, and are 
usually in warm sympathy with their kind, inspired 
by cosmopolitism and fraternalism, and uninfluenced 
by the theories and dogmas which run counter to 
the natural feelings of mankind. 

Our people give only a formal, nominal, and super- 
ficial assent to Creationism. We must go deeper 
than formal assent to discover what men do really 
believe. No one believes anything unless his belief 
includes all that goes logically with it. Even learned 
men have sometimes accepted this and that without 
halting to consider what is included in this, and what 
follows from that. 

I anticipate confidently that the day is coming, 
with the higher culture and enlightenment upon 
which we are now entering, when our philosophers 
will base their reasoning, concerning the great prob- 
lems of morals and freedom, upon the book of human 
life, rather than upon the book of Genesis — upon 
the record written in the instinctive thought of man- 
kind, rather than upon the Hebrew mythology — and 
when instinctive logic, belief, philosophy, and Reli- 
gion will be accepted as the true logic, belief, philos- 
ophy, and Religion of the human race ; and when all 
philosophies and authorities which are in conflict 
with man's moral instincts will no longer have any 
standing among enlightened men. 



\ 



PART IV 



NATURAL JUSTICE 



EACH DAY IS A DAY OF JUDGMENT — JUSTICE 
IS COMPENSATION, RECIPROCITY, EQUILIB- 
RIUM 

WE have discovered that Justice is the basis 
of Religion and of morals. Let us extend 
our investigation further afield that we may know 
more of Justice, and inquire whether the Eternal 
Order be, upon the whole, just or unjust. 

We shall find that the potency of Justice extends 
far beyond the realms of Religion and morals — that 
all of substance, energy, and life are involved in 
problems of Justice. 

When I lift my hand I expend so much of force. 
There must be compensation in rest and food for 
this expenditure. Justice settles the score, as it 
adjusts similar matters within and near us in every 
moment of our lives. 

All of our good institutions are examples of Jus- 
tice. A public road is an illustration. So much of 
money and labor have been expended on it to secure 
certain benefits. We may say that it is lifeless and 
senseless, yet it compensates us for our outlay. It 
is strange that this dead thing can pay its debts ! 

The honesty of the trees which we plant is also 



162 ETERNALISM 

impressive. Some of them will pay their debts to 
us in bloom, some in fruit, some in nuts ; others in 
fuel, lumber, sugar, turpentine, rubber, dye-stuffs, 
shade, and shelter. 

And the good qualities we acquire — moderation, 
industry, courtesy, order, patience, candor — are also 
honest debtors, contributing incessantly to our reve- 
nues. 

On the other hand, our evil institutions and habits 
are bad investments. They pay us nothing. We 
are debtors to them, and they are exacting creditors, 
forcing payment in full in money and labor, and 
sometimes in blood, agony, tears, humiliation, and 
shame. 

We recently had in this country the institution 
of chattel slavery, which we had cultivated for two 
hundred years. Preparatory to going out of busi- 
ness this institution called on us for a final settle- 
ment. Our indebtedness, which proved to be large 
— amounting to more than five hundred thousand 
lives, and over six thousand million dollars — was 
paid in full. 

Again, it seems strange that our institution of 
slavery, with no standing among the great powers 
of the earth, should have been able to collect such 
an indemnity in blood, treasure, and agony from an 
enlightened people, taking a drop of blood from the 
dominant race "for each drop drawn by the lash." 

And so it seems that everything in Nature, con- 



NATURAL JUSTICE 163 

scious and unconscious, animate and inanimate, is 
busily engaged in paying its debts. 

By what system is this perfect accounting made ? 
We see no books, observe no management, and yet 
the numberless settlements are made with as much 
exactness as if each one were superintended by a 
group of experts, combining more of knowledge and 
of the spirit of equity than is possessed by all of the 
scientists, thinkers, philosophers, and judges in the 
world. 

Even games, cards, and sports are based on exact 
Justice. Children instinctively demand fair play, 
and despise a cheat. One can get no pleasure out 
of solitaire if he play unfairly with himself. 

The laws of grammar and rhetoric are only just 
rules applied to language. And language is a system 
of Justice, the right word fitting the right thought. 
And so rightness, or Justice, applies to diet, exer- 
cise, work, rest, recreation, manners, and to all things. 

Justice is the basis of commerce, of exports, im- 
ports, and exchanges, of prices and wages, of supply 
and demand. Competition, when uninterrupted by 
man's greed or ignorance, is Justice. 

Heredity is Justice. Like must in equity produce 
like, evil must breed evil, good must yield good. 

We are administering Justice constantly in our 
praise and blame of our fellow men — in applause 
to a poet or discoverer, in condemnation to the 
greedy and rapacious, in aversion to tyranny, in love 
to our benefactors. 



164 ETERNALISM 

Each day is a day of judgment. We are judged 
continually, and usually correctly, by our friends 
and intimates. And we are constantly paying pen- 
alties to or receiving rewards from our judges — 
penalties in the indifference, dislike, suspicion, con- 
tempt, and detestation of our fellows ; rewards in 
their appreciation, confidence, good-will, and love. 

The vulgar receive no respect, the heartless no 
sympathy, the rapacious no affection. It is better 
to be a dog that has earned a little love than Caesar 
riding in triumph, his enemies dying on his chariot 
wheels. 

Justice is in the frost on the window-pane, and in 
the sunset of gold and crimson and purple, which 
reward the artistic sense in the minds even of the 
forlorn and poor — in the dune which the furious sea, 
beating upon the shore, builds unconsciously as a 
barrier against its own depredations — in the hope 
in the hearts of men which makes life endurable — in 
the first cry of the infant which rewards the mother's 
agony — in the transformation of the ugly worm into 
the brilliant butterfly, of manure into bloom, of a 
stench into fragrance — in the fact that the defensive 
position in warfare is stronger than the offensive 
position, that aggression is more difficult than self- 
preservation — in proportion, harmony, impartiality, 
compensation, reciprocity, equilibrium, equipoise — 
in the foot-ride and plumb-line of the carpenter ; the 
inch, foot, and mile ; the ounce, pound, and ton ; the 



NATURAL JUSTICE 165 

shilling, franc, mark, and dollar ; in all measures, 
weights, standards, and tests. 

Justice is in all the manifestations of evolution, by 
which plants, animals, and men adapt themselves to 
their environment, and make the best use of their 
opportunities. 

It is the foundation of every equation ; of the 
axioms and principles of mathematics and of logic ; 
of Kepler's laws ; of the correlation of forces. 



II 

JUSTICE INVOLVES A CYCLE OF CAUSE, DEVEL- 
OPMENT, AND EFFECT 

"~F>UT what of Injustice?" I am asked. "What 
jLJ of Torquemada and his nine thousand tor- 
tured victims ? What of the noble Bruno, who was 
burned at the stake ? What of all the other wrongs 
and atrocities which blacken the history of mankind ? 
In them we behold Justice defeated and Injustice 
triumphant. How can you say, in view of these 
wrongs, that Justice rules invariably ? " 

My interlocutor might point also to the ascent 
of a balloon or the flight of an eagle, and exclaim, 
" Behold gravitation defeated ! How can you say, 
in view of these facts, that gravitation is effective 
invariably ? " The balloon and the eagle will return 
to the earth. They cannot escape from the law of 
gravitation. 

To say that Justice is defeated because it requires 
time for completion is as unreasonable as if one 
would say that a journey is endless because its end 
is not reached in an instant. 

We do not comprehend the Rocky Mountains 
through the first glimpse of one of their peaks ; nor 



NATURAL JUSTICE 167 

is the whole thought of Emerson to be found in one 
of his lines. And Justice also is revealed only by 
the whole of it — in its completeness — and not by 
one glimpse or line. 

Perhaps the actual meaning of Infinite Justice can 
be expressed in this paraphrase of Pope's famous 
line : " Whatever is " — taken with its antecedents 
and consequences — " is right." 

Justice involves a cycle of cause, development, and 
effect — as seedtime, growth, and harvest — for its 
completion. A headache, separated from the indul- 
gence that preceded it, is apparently wrong. Con- 
nected with its cause, it is right. 

Injustice exists temporarily only. Every wrong 
must have its penalty, every outrage its retribution. 
As John Boyle O'Reilly says in " Peace and Pain : " 

" There is no ill without its compensation, 

And life and death are only light and shade ; 
There never beat a heart so base and sordid 

But felt at times a sympathetic glow ; 
There never lived a virtue unrewarded 
Nor died a vice without its meed of woe." 

If we could follow the crime against Bruno to the 
end, we should doubtless know that the law of Justice 
has been vindicated. We have seen it vindicated in 
a historic sense. Among enlightened people on this 
earth, Bruno is glorified as a martyr, and the name 
Torquemada has become a synonym for monster and 
fiend. 

We who have complete faith in Justice believe 



168 ETERNALISM 

that Bruno still lives, and that he is happy in pro- 
portion to his merits ; and that Torquemada also 
lives, and that he has expiated, or will expiate, his 
crimes ; and that the victims of his savagery are not 
dead. As Emerson says in " Brahma : " 

" If the red slayer think he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 
They know not well the subtle ways, 
I keep and pass and turn again.' ' 

The individual, when he comprehends the full 
meaning of his relations to the Eternal Order — as 
explained by the theory of eternal existence — can 
say: 

" In my previous lives I have doubtless suffered 
all forms of wrong, and enjoyed all kinds of privilege 
and immunity. I have worn silks and rags, been 
prince and pauper, master and slave. I have lived 
in civilization and savagery ; in luxury and in hard- 
ship. The servile have fawned upon me ; the arro- 
gant have scorned me. I have sinned, and others 
have sinned against me. 

" I have suffered from treachery and ingratitude, 
persecution and outrage, tyranny and brutality. 
These have been hard lessons, yet they teach me that 
I shall be faithful and grateful, kindly and sympa- 
thetic, honest and just. 

" My body can be whipped, enslaved, mutilated, 
but my soul cannot be whipped, enslaved, mutilated. 
My body can be killed, but my soul is deatldess. 



NATURAL JUSTICE 169 

My body can be dishonored, but no power, no inqui- 
sition, no king, can dishonor my soul. I alone can 
dishonor my soul." 

Perhaps the most important fact known to man is 
this — that the same cause, acting under the same 
conditions, produces exactly the same result. This 
fact demonstrates the steadfastness and equity of the 
natural order. 

By assuming for a moment that effects bear no 
certain relation to causes, we may comprehend what 
life would be if Injustice were really dominant in 
the world. 

If definite results should cease to follow definite 
causes, the compass would point east or west, north 
or south, at random ; the plumb-line would deflect 
from the earth's center ; ice would burn, fire freeze ; 
potatoes would produce pebbles ; human beings would 
be born from animals and reptiles ; lower creatures 
and things would be born to women ; the ear would 
not hear, the eye would not see, and the tongue would 
not talk ; poison would be edible, food poisonous — 
and so on to the end of a chapter of horrors wholly 
beyond human imagination. 

And if the law of gravitation, or attraction, were 
also reversed, this globe with the life upon it, and 
all other worlds and lives, would be promptly reduced 
to atoms, each atom becoming repellent to all other 
atoms, and seeking its own disintegration. 

It is plain that this great Universe, of which our 



170 ETERNALISM 

own world forms an insignificant part, could not 
maintain its unceasing activities without order and 
harmony transcending any human conceptions of 
order and harmony ; or without Justice, which is the 
basic principle of order and harmony. 



Ill 

NOTHING EXISTS WITHOUT COMPENSATION — 
THE KEY OF ALL TRUTH 

A LAW of equivalents, compensation, repara- 
tion, and reciprocity, which is the Law of 
Justice, runs through the whole physical as well as 
the moral world. The engine can give back only 
the power that is put into it ; the soil yields in pro- 
portion to its food and care. 

The law of averages, to which reference has 
already been made, is a line of equilibrium, or equity, 
running through those events which are supposed to 
be subject to accident, hazard, or chance. In drawing 
impartially a long series of numbers, the odd and 
even figures cannot drift in the aggregate far apart, 
and will be repeatedly equalized. The males and 
females born are practically equal. 

All of the perturbations of Nature — the tides, the 
lightning, the cyclone — are but her struggles to 
restore an equilibrium between forces. As Nature 
abhors a vacuum, so she loathes all other forms of 
inequality, unevenness, unfairness, injustice. 

If the great Law of Justice were to cease to oper- 
ate in human affairs, society and civilization would 



172 ETERNALISM 

be wrecked in a day ; and if the Law of Equilib- 
rium, or Equity, in the material world were to fail, 
the Universe would be turned into a vortex of fire 
and flame in an instant. 

The Universe is under the reign of law, which is 
everywhere — in the smallest atom as well as in the 
solar system, in things mean and minute as well as 
in things noble and great. So far as we have come 
into an understanding of these laws, we have found 
none defective. 

No philosophical mind can concede that a law of 
Nature could possibly be out of balance, or in any 
way less than true and perfect. When we advance 
a theory to the point where it would prove that a 
law of Nature is out of balance and unjust, we should 
know that the conclusion is wrong ; that it is our 
reasoning, and not the law, that is out of balance 
and unjust. 

He who plants the wrong seed will raise the wrong 
crop, and if he plants the right seed at the wrong 
time or in the wrong way, he will raise no crop. 
Only by right ways, right methods, right seed, right 
calculations, right machinery, can right results be 
obtained. 

If right ways are necessary in our small human 
affairs, they must be vital in the greater and more 
intricate concerns of universal Nature. 

Why do we assume that the invention of perpetual 
motion is an absurdity, an impossibility? Because 
power without compensation is impossible. 



NATURAL JUSTICE 173 

And is power the only thing dependent on com- 
pensation ? Can anything exist without compensa- 
tion ? Science and common sense must agree in one 
answer : Nothing exists without compensation. And 
what is compensation ? Compensation is Justice. 
* No one can maintain on grounds of reason the 
proposition that Justice applies to motion and not to 
man — that Nature is just to unconscious and unjust 
to conscious things. 

The materialistic view that death ends all — and 
hence that wrong can exist without retribution, and 
good without recompense — is as irrational as the 
theory that perpetual motion can be invented. 

He who comprehends this truth — that nothing 
can exist without compensation, that nothing is pos- 
sible without Justice — has solved the riddle of exist- 
ence, has grasped the key of all truth. It is the 
starting point for all sound reasoning and reckoning. 
It illuminates the great problem of final causes — 
the question whether things are as they are through 
design, or chance, or otherwise. 

Since there has been no creation, design is impos- 
sible. And since everything is subject to law, chance 
is also impossible. 

One and one make two. We must assume that the 
might of all the armies, navies, treasuries, courts, 
parliaments, cabinets, and thrones on earth — and 
all other power, mundane and supermundane, human 
and divine — could produce no other result than two 
from the addition of one and one. 



174 ETERNALISM 

What is this principle which is so marvelously 
inflexible in the addition of one and one ? It is the 
principle of equivalency, of Justice. One and one 
equal two, and they can equal nothing else. 

The invariable result of the addition of one and 
one, and the results of all other causes in Nature, 
are due apparently neither to design nor to chance, 
but to the principle which pervades and determines 
all things — the principle of Justice. 



IV 

JUSTICE IS THE BASIC VERITY, THE FUNDA- 
MENTAL LAW, THE DIVINE PRINCIPLE 

JUSTICE, I hold, is the ultimate fact, the key- 
principle of the Universe. It regulates all 
things, binds and holds all things. 

A man out of balance falls. A globe out of balance 
is destroyed. What would happen if the Universe 
were out of balance and ruled by the principle of 
Wrongness? The result would be that nothing 
would be manifest in Nature but confusion, disorder, 
anarchy, chaos. Since the Universe is not thus given 
over to chaos, we know that Wrongness is not the 
ruling principle in the Universe. 

On the other hand, those who have investigated 
Nature most closely and thoroughly have found order 
and harmony, equilibrium and compensation, and 
nothing contrary to these principles, in all of Nature's 
works and ways. We know a tree by its fruit. The 
fact that order and harmony, equilibrium and com- 
pensation, are always present in Nature, proves that 
the principle of Justice rules in the Universe. 

Moreover, the existence of life proves also that 
Rightness regulates the Universe — for, without Jus- 



176 ETERNALISM 

tice, or JRightness, life could not exist. It would 
be as rational to say that the Brooklyn bridge could 
support itself without cables and piers, as that life 
could be without Justice. Even the reversal of the 
principle of gravitation alone, as I have shown, would 
destroy every living thing, and rend every combina- 
tion of matter, in the Universe. 

Justice is of necessity the regulating and saving 
force in Nature, since a force contrary to Justice — 
if such could exist — would be a destroyer. 

And instinctive belief — a powerful ally — con- 
firms my argument. Every form and manifestation 
of religious belief rests upon one foundation only — 
upon the faith that Justice is the ruling principle, 
the basic fact, in the world. 

The principle of Justice is that which must be 
and could not be otherwise ; that without which no 
organism could exist. Obviously also it is that Di- 
vine Principle which all men recognize, and which is 
the highest conception of Power and Eightness of 
which each soul is capable. 

It is Herbert Spencer's " Unknowable " and the 
Agnostic's u Unknown." It is the Eternal Power 
of the philosophers, the Final Cause of Teleology, 
the One Principle of Monism. 

It is the God of the devout, profaned no more by 
man's ignorance. It is that which comforts man in 
grief, humiliation, desolation, torment, and martyr- 
dom — that which strikes terror to the hearts of the 



NATURAL JUSTICE 177 

malicious, the treacherous, the rapacious, the cruel. 
It is might and right, recompense and retribution, 
hope and doom, heaven and hell. It is Omnipotence 
and Omnipresence. It is immutable and unchange- 
able, and without shadow of turning. 

Nature has one law which is the source of all her 
laws, one principle the base of all her principles, one 
truth the foundation of all her verities — and this 
fundamental law, principle, truth, is Justice. 

Science and philosophy, Religion and morality, 
and all of the facts and forces of Nature, are built 
upon Justice. Upon what does Justice rest ? We 
can comprehend nothing superior or antecedent to 
the great principle of Justice. It is complete and 
perfect in itself. While things as they exist are 
complex, the heart of things must be, as the Monists 
claim, and as enlightened Religion affirms, single 
and simple. 

" Nature," says Du Prel, " is more simple than 
our conception thereof ; we begin with very compli- 
cated theories, and end with the most simple." 

"The plainest truths," says Ludwig Feuerbach, 
" are those precisely upon which man hits last of all." 

" It nettles men," says Goethe, " to find that truth 
should be so simple." 



PART V 
ETERNALISM 



AN ANSWER TO THE MATERIALIST — A DEM- 
ONSTRATION OF PRE-EXISTENCE 

MYRIADS of plant forms, all of the two hun- 
dred thousand species of insects, and most 
other animal species to the extent of three hundred 
thousand more, go through some form of visible 
metamorphosis. 

While these transformations vary greatly, the 
familiar case of the caterpillar and the butterfly is 
perhaps as good an illustration as any other. The 
caterpillar, upon reaching the end of its existence as 
a caterpillar, forms a cocoon out of its own body. A 
spark of life, which is called the pupa or chrysalis, 
survives in the cocoon. Sir John Lubbock says : 
"The quiescent and death-like condition of the 
pupa is one of the most remarkable phenomena of 
insect metamorphosis." 

In time the chrysalis emerges from the cocoon in 
the form of a butterfly. The butterfly resembles the 
caterpillar as little as an eagle resembles a hog. 
One life only inhabits the two distinct and dissimilar 
bodies of the caterpillar and the butterfly. 

The vital persistence of the caterpillar is a com- 



182 ETERNALISM 

plete answer to the contention of the Materialist — 
that life cannot survive the dissolution of the physical 
body. The physical body of the caterpillar has ceased 
to be ; it has passed beyond the possibility of restora- 
tion or resurrection. Yet the real life of the cater- 
pillar is not ended ; its deathless principle survives 
in the cocoon ; and it will live to inhabit the body of 
the butterfly. 

Neither the caterpillar nor the butterfly can sur- 
vive freezing, while the thread of life in the cocoon 
has lived, under the experiments of Reaumur, for 
three years in an ice house. 

What is this deathless principle which can live so 
long in a death-like form, and which survives a tem- 
perature which would be fatal to the physical body 
of its predecessor, the worm, and of its successor, the 
butterfly? What is this vital spark, life principle, 
or individual essence, which survives the dissolution 
of one body and passes on, after three years in ice, 
to another and a dissimilar body ? 

The word soul, an old word in all languages, is 
apparently the only word which fitly describes that 
form of life which survives physical dissolution. 
With the caterpillar, death does not accompany 
physical dissolution. For it there is no annihilation. 
Having shuffled off this mortal coil, it yet lives. 

The cocoon is the grave into which the mortal 
part of the caterpillar descends, and from which its 
immortal part ascends into the form of the butterfly. 






ETERNALISM 183 

The caterpillar has an after-existence in the butter- 
fly, and the butterfly has had a preexistence in the 
caterpillar. 

This transformation demonstrates the fact of the 
preexistence and after-existence of an individual 
life — that preexistence and after-existence belong 
to the order of Nature. At the very least, it answers 
completely the assumption that there is anything 
unreasonable, unscientific, fanciful, or contrary to 
the natural order, in the theory that one life can 
inhabit more than one physical body. 

It should be noted also that metamorphosis is the 
rule, rather than the exception, in animal life. The 
individuals of not less than half a million different 
species of animals undergo visible transformation, 
including usually the phenomena of one life inhabit- 
ing two or more dissimilar physical bodies. 

Concerning the rationality of transmigration, 

Huxley says : 

* 
" None but very hasty thinkers will reject it [transmi- 
gration] on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like, the 
doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its 
roots in the world of reality, and it may claim such sup- 
port as the great argument from analogy is capable of 
! supplying." 

J Not all of Nature's transformations are in the 

open. The eye cannot follow them completely. But 

I her laws are harmonious. As Herbert Spencer says, 



184 ETERNALISM 

"The observed metamorphoses suggest that any 
metamorphosis may occur." 

The theological theory that animals are soulless 
is plainly untenable. If man be immortal, all other 
forms of life must also be immortal. 

On the other hand, if there be a deathless prin- 
ciple in the worm, there must also be a deathless 
principle in man. 



i, 



II 

THE THEORY OF CREATION IS AS THE DARK- 
NESS OF NIGHT ; THE THEORY OF ETERNAL- 
ISM AS THE LIGHT OF DAY 

MODERN science advances mainly through the 
use of intelligent speculations and assump- 
tions, which are justified by their utility. N. S. 
Shaler says : 

" Furthermore, all successful scientific inquiry shows us 
that the only way to interrogate the deeps is by sending 
into them well framed conjectures, hypotheses which state 
what the order of events should be in order to satisfy our 
minds. That this method of exploration is good is shown 
by its exceeding success ; by it we have drawn from the 
darkness all that we have of light." — The Individual. 

Of the now universally accepted theory of the in- 
destructibility of matter, Herbert Spencer says : 

" It must be added that no experimental verification of 

the truth that matter is indestructible is possible without 

a tacit assumption of it. For all such verification implies 

weighing, and weighing implies that the matter forming 

I the weight remains the same." — First Principles, 182. 

The atomic theory also is an assumption of science 
which cannot be proved in a strictly scientific sense. 
This is true also of the theory of the conservation of 






186 ETERNALISM 

force, and of nearly all of the general postulates 
of science. Speculations and assumptions can be 
dispensed with only in those comparatively small 
provinces of knowledge covered by the " exact 
sciences." 

Science is compelled, lacking other proof, to accept 
that theory which is most rational — which explains 
things best. Geology consists almost wholly of the 
theories which fit and agree best with the facts, and 
evolution rests mainly upon the fact that it explains 
things. Building upon such rational assumptions, 
science builds truly, and can build truly in no other 
way. 

The theory of the Creation of the soul of man is 
an assumption purely, which has grown out of Hebrew 
Theology. It has not the sanction of common belief, 
for the Orientals, composing one-half of the civilized 
world, dispute it. Schopenhauer says that the Chi- 
nese language and the Sanscrit have no word for 
" Creation " used in our theological sense. 

And our own people who accept the theory of 
Creation nominally, deny it literally in their scorn 
of Fatalism, its monstrous product ; while the instinc- 
tive belief of mankind, as I have shown, is also at 
war with Creationism. 

Herbert Spencer says : 

" To the mass of people nothing is so costly as thought. 
The fact that, taking the world over, ninety-nine people 
out of a hundred accept the creed to which they were born, 






ETERNALISM 187 

exemplifies their mental attitude toward things at large. 
Nearly all of them pursue mechanically the routine to 
which they have been accustomed, and are not only blind 
to its defects, but will not recognize them as defects when 
they are pointed out." — Ethics, ii. 343. 

This reproof could be applied with equal force to 
the learned men who have accepted the Creative 
creed " to which they were born " and who also 
"pursue mechanically the routine to which they 
have been accustomed." 

Do they know that the soul of man is created ? 
If they do, they should demonstrate the fact. They 
can demonstrate the Creative hypothesis only by 
proving that it explains things better than any other 
theory. If they cannot do this, they must admit that 
it has no foundation upon which to rest. 

The theory of the Creation of the soul of man 
is an assumption which explains nothing and con- 
fuses everything. It presents life as a riddle, an 
entanglement, a labyrinth, a maze of contradictions 
— dark, dismal, puzzling, insoluble. It belittles and 
degrades man, robs him of worth, of accountability, 
of freedom, and even of his reasoning powers. It is 
worse than an irrational theory; it is an immoral 
theory. 

On the other hand, the theory of Eternalism 
explains all things in a simple and natural way, and 
in harmony with Eight and Justice. 

The theory of Creationism is as the darkness 



188 ETERNALISM 

of night ; the theory of Eternalism as the light of 
day. 

The eternal nature of matter is accepted by sci- 
ence as a necessary truth, without which the physical 
world would be inexplicable. The eternal nature of 
the individual soul is another truth without which 
the moral world is inexplicable* 

Some one may say : " Nature preserves nothing 
as a whole. She dissolves into its original elements 
the body of man at his death. So we must assume 
that she dissolves the soul of man at his death. Sci- 
ence cannot admit that anything can avoid dissolu- 
tion." 

Quite to the contrary, we know that the soul, or 
vital spark, in the caterpillar is not dissolved with 
the dissolution of the physical body of the caterpil- 
lar, but passes on to the butterfly ; and we know that 
the identical life principle in the butterfly had pre- 
viously inhabited the body of the worm. 

To the contrary also, science does admit that 
Nature preserves the atom as a whole ; that the 
atom is one and indivisible, invisible, uncreatable, 
indestructible, eternal. 

As the atom is the basic fact, the Ultimate Thing, 
in the world of matter, so the soul of man is the basic 
fact, the Ultimate Thing, in the world of mind and 
morals. 

Science has accepted the whole doctrine of Eter- 



ETERNALISM 189 

nalism, save only the theory that man's soul is 
eternal. When science advances the soul of the 
individual to the dignity which it accords to the 
immortal atom, when it grants that the soul of man, 
like the atom, is indivisible and eternal, then its 
position will come into complete harmony with real 
Keligion. 



Ill 



THEORIES CONCERNING THE REINCARNATION 
OF SOULS 

MANY theories concerning the migration of 
souls come down to us — mainly from the 
sources of the Egyptian and Hindoo Religions and 
from the Greek philosophers — reinforced by volu- 
minous modern speculations and investigations. It 
would be unwise to accept any of these theories as 
the last word to be uttered upon the question. 

The ancient theory of transmigration through the 
souls of animals has had little standing in modern 
times. While science now recognizes that " life is 
an endless series of metamorphoses," there is nothing 
in Nature to justify a belief in a transformation so 
violent as that of a man into a brute. 

The ways of physical evolution must give some 
indication of the ways of spiritual evolution. As 
physical evolution has been so slow as to be imper- 
ceptible save to the most expert observers, so the 
transformation of souls must also be gradual. 

Yet the souls of sonic brutes are doubtless travel- 
ing inanward, and the souls of some men bruteward. 
Bat these movements must be slow, taking long 
periods for completion. 



ETERNALISM 191 

Many of the theories concerning the migration of 
souls rest upon a mythological foundation, as does 
Theology. They purport to be the work of those 
who speak by divine insight, inspiration, or authority. 

It is not well to discard one authority, and set up 
in its place another ; for the last may be no better 
than the first. The world grows weary of authority. 
If a thing be reasonable, authority is useless ; if it be 
unreasonable, authority cannot save it. 

The old theories of transmigration, or metempsy- 
chosis, are sometimes complicated with a remote 
creation of man, with his ultimate annihilation, or 
with other theories which run counter to Justice. 

The theory that man was created a very long time 
ago, and that he will be annihilated after another 
very long period, rights nothing. It has no funda- 
mental moral advantage over the theory of Material- 
ism. Indeed it differs from the theory of Material- 
ism only in this — that it substitutes a long life for 
a short one. It is in agreement with the essential 
doctrine of Materialism — that man is a something 
that is created, and that will be annihilated. 

A theory of preexistence, transmigration, or rein- 
carnation is not necessarily in harmony with Justice. 
If it include the theory of Creation, it is quite as 
distinctly at war with Justice as are both Theology 
and Materialism. 

For this reason I have used herein the word Eter- 
nalism — thereby meaning the life which has neither 



192 ETERNALISM 

beginning nor end — which theory of life can alone 
be harmonized with Justice. 

Justice demands an eternally existing soul. Our 
view of Nature's ways must negative the thought 
that the soul has existed in inaction. We see it here 
clothed with a gross envelope, a physical body. We 
may assume that it has had many others, similar 
yet widely different, upon this earth, and elsewhere. 
It struggles here ; it has struggled there ; it will 
struggle hereafter. 

There is an Oriental doctrine that the movement 
of the soul is continually progressive; that it is 
ascending constantly through definite stages to higher 
planes, and will ultimately reach perfection. If the 
individual soul is carried forward by a vast progress- 
ive movement of all souls, then men reap what they 
do not sow, and Justice has no place in the Eternal 
Order. 

There can be but one key to the secret of the mi- 
gration of souls, and that key is Justice. Each soul 
must get what it earns ; no more and no less. The 
theory that the soul can advance, otherwise than 
through its own effort and merit, is an immoral and 
an unjust theory, and must consequently be untrue. 

Co-existent with all forms of religious faith has 
been a belief in a Land of Spirits, an Other-world, 
to which the souls of men repair, or return, after 
death. Indeed this faith is an essential part of the 
belief in the survival of the soul. 






ETERNALISM 193 

This faith in man's conscious existence in spirit 
form, after the death of his body, has the authenticity 
of innate conviction ; it is a part of the instinctive 
moral and religious belief of the human race. 

The theory of dualism is expressed as follows by 
Emerson in " Compensation : " 

" An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each 
thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it 
whole — as, spirit, matter ; man, woman ; odd, even ; 
subjective, objective ; in, out ; upper, under ; motion, 
rest ; yea, nay. . . . The same dualism underlies the 
nature and condition of man." 

This theory touching the double nature of all 
things sustains the belief that the present form of 
existence requires another and an opposite form — an 
Other-life — to make it complete. 

Among all forms of faith there is a distinct tend- 
ency to picture the Other-life as the opposite of this 
life. We may observe in this fact another evidence 
of the harmony between instinctive belief and scien- 
tific truth ; for science is aware that change involves 
alternation from one state to an opposite state — that 
the day turns from light to dark, from dark to light ; 
the seasons from hot to cold, from cold to hot, and 
that movements are up and down, to the right and 
left, going and returning. 

Of the many mythological beliefs and philosoph- 
ical theories concerning the Other-life and the proc- 
esses of reincarnation, those which appear to me to 



194 ETERNALISM 

be most in harmony with the order of Nature as we 
see it, with instinctive belief, and with Infinite Jus- 
tice, are epitomized here : 

" Man's life is dual. The soul migrates from the 
Present-world to the Other-world — a place in which 
souls are little changed save in being freed from 
earthliness. 

" Death is the Unmasking of Souls. The Other- 
world is a land of Truth, in which there are no lies, 
and in which each soul stands revealed for what it 
is. Hell is there the exposure of evil souls, and 
heaven the revealing of the good. 

" The Other-world is to the Present-world as sum- 
mer to winter, as light to darkness, as rest to toil, 
as recreation to hardship, as order to confusion, as 
peace to war. 

u The Present-world, in the economy of Nature, is 
as a state of war, a hard school, a place in which 
conditions are adverse, harsh, and rigorous ; in which 
oppression may thrive, and greed fatten, and hypoc- 
risy pass as holiness, and lies as truth ; in which the 
noble may be obscured and the vulgar exalted — all 
for a little time. 

u After the death of the physical body, each soul 
returns to its real part in the Land of Truth. 

M In the Other-world, we may meet, recognize, and 
abide with the friends of this life who have preceded 

Or may come after us, and also with the friends of 
our former lives, who are unrecognizable now, even 
by • the lonely lamp of memory. 1 



ETERNALISM 195 

" The more spiritual and noble are at peace and 
rest in the Other-world. They have returned home, 
as it were, after a weary pilgrimage in alien lands. 

" On the other hand, the lower souls — the gross, 
dull, and vicious — do not find the Other-world a 
land to their liking. Stripped of the mask of the 
flesh, they can deceive no one, not even themselves. 
Deprived of all means of sensual gratification, they 
long to return to the more pleasant and congenial 
life in the flesh. In this yearning for the flesh they 
are finally gratified. 

" Great and good souls also desire often to return 
to the life in the flesh, recognizing that the earth is 
the great field of conflict between good and evil, and 
that the opportunities for progress are really greater 
under the harsh conditions prevailing in this life 
than under the happier conditions existing in the 
Other-world, In this aspiration they also are grati- 
fied, and they return to the conflict as heroes who, 
from a sense of duty, return to the wars. 

" Each soul gets, in the long run, what it wants, 
whether its desire be high or low. It goes its own 
way, and reaps its own retributions and rewards." 



IV 

WHY HAVE WE NO MEMORY OF OUR PAST LIVES ? 

WHY have we no memory of our past lives ? 
If of our former existence there be no rec- 
ollection, has not our identity been lost ? 

Doubtless the butterfly has no recollection of its 
previous life as a worm ; but this defect in its 
memory does not change the facts, nor affect its 
identity. 

We find it desirable often in one short life to turn 
over a new leaf, open a new set of books, break 
off from the past, abandon an old life. This life 
doubtless is as a miniature to that longer life to 
which our present existence is not even as a second 
to threescore years and ten. 

As we grow old here, we become garrulous and 
tiresome with our recollections and reminiscences. 
Much more wearisome we should be if we had the 
experiences of all our lives, all of our humiliations 
and successes, to draw from. Pie who lives in the 
I > re sci it is wholly alive ; lie who lives in the past is 
weakening, dying. 

Each man as he stands is the epitome of his own 
past. His thought and moral substance show what 



ETERNALISM 197 

his life has been. In his character one can read his 
story. The volume is open for him and for all men. 
In it are concentrated the results of all his lives, as 
upon one plate the camera throws the details of a 
landscape. 

His own memory could not change, but would 
doubtless be at variance with, the result ; for our 
memory retains but a jumble of matters trivial as 
well as important ; it is usually inaccurate and always 
fallible. 

Memory is a treacherous vagrant who plays tricks 
with us, and eludes us often when we need him most. 
Of the present life we remember little. The years 
of our infancy, the hours passed in sleep, are all for- 
gotten. Who remembers accurately all the details 
of yesterday, of this day last week, of this date last 
year? 

He who has reached fifty years has breathed for 
1,576,800,000 seconds. How many of these seconds 
can he remember ? Certainly not one in one thou- 
sand. We retain, then, the memory of an insignifi- 
cant part of the life we are now living. 

It is true, however, that many persons, and more 
particularly the thoughtful and intelligent, do have 
glimpses, sometimes vague and often clear, of a pre- 
vious existence. Edgar A. Poe, in " Eureka," says : 

" We walk about, amid the destinies of our world exist- 
ence, accompanied by dim but ever present memories of a 
Destiny more vast — very distant in the bygone time and 



198 ETERNALISM 

infinitely awful. . . . We live out a youth, peculiarly 
haunted by such dreams, yet never mistaking them for 
dreams. As memories we know them. During our youth 
the distinctness is too clear to deceive us even for a mo- 
ment. But the doubt of manhood dispels these feelings 
as illusions." 

We know little as yet of the intricacies and pos- 
sibilities of the human mind. Some of our modern 
psychologists affirm that the memory of the sub- 
conscious mind is perfect. Memory may be, for all 
that we know to the contrary, a flower that opens, 
rather than closes, with the change which we call 
death ; and the mind may contain a perfect register, 
yet to be unlocked, of its past experiences. 



THE UNIVERSE IS MAN'S HERITAGE, MAN'S 
ARENA, MAN'S THRONE 

THE theory that adverse fortune is the penalty 
for sin in this life, or in a previous life, may be 
questioned. The sun shines, and the rain falls, alike 
upon the just and the unjust. 

The man morally good is as fair a target for the 
lightning, and as susceptible to the malaria, as the 
man morally bad. There is no evidence that, in a 
railroad accident, or a battle, the evil receive more 
injuries proportionately than the good. Difficulties, 
trials, hardships, bereavements, and sorrows are as 
likely to come to the good as to the bad. 

It is not probable that an Eternal Judge dispenses 
any special judgments to fit special cases, or exer- 
cises a guardianship or supervision over all matters 
great and small in the Universe, or keeps a set of 
books which show the moral and eternal reckoning 
of all souls. It would be more in harmony with what 
we know of Nature to say that our acts are causes 
which produce their own unvarying results — as 
food refreshes, sleep rests, toil wearies, fire burns, 
poison kills. 



200 ETERNALISM 

A good act, in the nature of things, has a good 
result, which is a reward ; and an evil act has a bad 
result, which is a penalty. 

Man is free to choose between food and poison, 
between good and evil. He goes his own way in 
freedom, sails his own barque, and makes the port 
he aims for ; or, if he have no force of character, 
drifts indolently with the wind and tide. 

Our duty lies here. In one sense, and a very im- 
portant sense, the Present is all there really is of 
life. The Past is gone. All the powers in the world 
cannot change one fact in the Past ; it is a book 
that is closed. In the Present we make our Future. 
We do not live in the Future. When we reach the 
Future it will be the Present. We live only Now. 
Man builds his character only in the Now. 

Man can make no progress save against adverse 
conditions, and all progress of consequence must be 
against hard and stern resistance. An easy victory 
is a poor victory. It is in the shock of real conflict 
that character is made or marred. t 

The chief result of man's sin must be in the degra- 
dation of his own soul, or character. The character 
is, in some sense, the soul of man. The character 
alone reveals the actual man. The character is made 
and modified slowly. It is the result of persistent 
effort. A few good actions cannot make it ; nor can 
a few errors destroy it. 

The man of high and noble character, though he 



ETERNALISM 201 

i 

be poor and of humble station, is really rich and 
great ; and he who is possessed of a frivolous, selfish, 
or vicious character, though he have great earthly 
possessions, though even he sit upon a throne, is 
actually a pauper. 

He whose character is being strengthened and 
improved, is an ascending soul ; and he whose char- 
acter is weakening, is a descending soul, traveling 
the road of degeneracy and degradation which leads 
down to the meanest and vilest forms of life. 

Evolution is no more a law of Nature, or a fact in 
the Universe, than devolution. Progress and retro- 
gression, growth and decay, action and reaction, are 
the ways of Nature. 

In the past million years new worlds have been 
born and others have ceased to be ; great civilizations 
have been evolved and have perished; great races 
have been developed from savagery, have reached 
their prime, have descended, and have become extinct. 

The unceasing motion throughout the Universe is 
both progressive and retrogressive. All souls are 
moving constantly up or down, heavenward or hell- 
ward. The individual can neither die nor stand still. 
He must advance or recede. 

The question arises, If retrogression be as much 
the law of Nature as progress, may there not be a 
culminating point in the career of man from which 
he must descend ? 



202 ETERNALISM 

That acme would, of necessity, be the place of per- 
fection, which would seem to be unattainable. As 
the North Pole is that point on the earth's surface 
from which one can only move southward, so perfec- 
tion would be that lonely pinnacle from which there 
could be no movement save backward — that incon- 
ceivable point where progress ceases. 

The individual attaining perfection would of ne- 
cessity reach a state in which he would be inferior 
to no other soul, human or divine, in the Universe. 
Even if the imagination could conceive of such a 
summit, it is so remote from our present plane of 
life that it can be safely omitted from all human 
calculations. 

Our own world, in comparison with the Universe, 
is not even as one drop of water to all of the water 
in all of the oceans of this globe. 

Some of the globes of the Universe must contain 
forms of life much lower, and others forms of life 
much higher, than the life on this earth. There are 
doubtless worlds possessing civilization, arts, and 
learning, compared with which our civilization is 
crude, our arts and powers feeble, our learning as 
the knowledge of little children. 

There must be in other worlds heights which are 
undreamed of here, and intelligences beside which 
our most consummate creatures are as the worms of 
the earth to the men of the earth. 



ETERNALISM 203 

As Tennyson says : 

"This truth within the mind rehearse, 
That in a boundless Universe 
Is boundless better, boundless worse." 

As there is doubtless on this earth no living thing 
so low that it may not, through Nature's unceasing 
changes and opportunities, reach the form of man, 
so there can be no higher forms of life in other 
worlds to which man may not ascend. 

And as there is apparently no limit, in the meaner 
forms of life on this earth, to the possibilities of 
degradation for the descending soul, so there can be 
no boundary in the eternal life of man to the prog- 
ress of the determined ascending soul. 

Man can move forward if he so wills ; he will 
drift backward if he does not work and fight against 
the adverse currents. All heights are accessible, 
and all depths are open, to him. He may advance 
in freedom, hampered only by the trials and ob- 
stacles which make and strengthen character. 

The Universe exists for man. It is man's heri- 
tage, man's arena, man's throne. It has no secrets 
which he cannnot grasp, no barriers which he can- 
not surmount, no forces hostile to him which he 
cannot conquer. 



VI 

TO EACH SOUL ALL GOOD IS ACCESSIBLE, AND 
ALL EVIL POSSIBLE 

EVOLUTION, as we have seen, is a half truth; 
the other half being devolution. Most of 
man's blunders in reasonir j are built upon the in- 
complete half truth. 

Even the acute mind of Schopenhauer did not 
always see beyond the half truth. Let us consider 
some of his pessimistic utterances concerning man : 

" There is only one mendacious thing in the world, and 
that is man. Every other is true and sincere, and makes 
no attempt to conceal what it is, expressing its feelings 
just as they are. 

" Man is at bott >m a savage, horrible beast. ... A 
hundred records, old and new, produce the conviction that 
in his unrelenting cruelty man is in no way inferior to the 
tiger and the hyena. . . . vlan is the only animal which 
causes pain to others w : nit any further purpose than 
just to cause it." — O' nan Nature, 18-22. 

This is true ; and much more can be said to the 
discredit of man. He descends to depths unknown 

among other animals. None other is so envious, 

jealous, ungrateful, treacherous, and malicious 



ETERNALISM 205 

man ; none other cloaks his malice and treachery in 
the pretense of friendship and good-will, while wait- 
ing an opportunity to strike. Man is the only hypo- 
crite ; the only animal that robs, subjugates, scourges, 
and enslaves others of his own kind, pretending that 
he does it for their good, or for the advancement of 
civilization and Religion. 

While this arraignment of man is true, it is only 
a half truth. It is true that man is vicious beyond 
any other animal ; it is also true that man is noble 
beyond all other animals. Man ascends the heights 
of unselfishness, sacrifice, love, and devotion. He 
alone accepts martyrdom intelligently, giving his life 
for his cause, his country, or his kind. 

Man is a devil ; this is a half truth. He is also a 
saint ; this is the other half of the same truth. Man 
is at once the vilest and noblest thing in our world ; 
this is the whole truth. 

The pessimistic view of things is true, and so also 
is the optimistic view. Those who devote themselves 
to the championship of one view against the other 
waste their time. Pessimism cannot exist without 
optimism, nor optimism without pessimism; good 
without evil, nor evil without good. 

Good and evil are two sides of one thing. We can 
never get the whole truth until we look upon both 
sides, and see the whole. We can say in the night, 
" The world is dark ; " this is a half truth. In the 
day, " The world is light ; " this is the other half. 



206 ETERNALISM 

But to say, " The world is light and dark," is the 
whole truth. 

Though pessimism and evil are half truths, they 
are the negative, black, ugly, and pestilential half 
truths; while optimism and good are the positive, 
luminous, beautiful, and wholesome half truths. 

The meanest soul has within itself the possibilities 
of all wisdom and goodness ; the noblest has the pos- 
sibilities of all degradation. No man is so base that 
he has no spark of good ; none so high that he has 
no taint of evil. 

Each soul is a world in which all good is accessible, 
and all evil possible. Each soul is also a battlefield 
in which the vast hosts of good and evil, folly and 
wisdom, are forever at war. 

The individual is an autocrat, an emperor, a czar, 
who can advance at will the standard of Right or 
Wrong within his own soul. 

Eternalism is the gospel of hope, self-reliance, and 
courage. It preaches of the power of man, of the 
vast resources of man, of the dignity of man. It 
says to man : You are poor, but you can be rich ; 
you are weak, but you can be strong ; you are foolish, 
but you can be wise ; you are vicious, but you can be 
noble ; you are wretched, but you can be happy ; 
you are defeated, but you can be a conqueror ! 



VII 

ETERNALISM — A FAITH BASED ON REASON AND 
UNDERSTANDING 

ALL shall have their chance. Those to whom 
opportunity is denied, those who are cut off 
in infancy or youth — even the defective and de- 
mented — shall have their chance. The dullest thing 
shall have its chance. Nature is as just to the mean- 
est insect as to the noblest man. 

He who grasps the truth that man's soul is eternal 
— that the life here is only one short act in an exist- 
ence which has had no beginning, and will have no 
end — knows that no misfortune can seriously harm 
him. 

Sorrows, poverty, blindness, deformity, paralysis, 
and all other afflictions and maladies, will come to 
an end. Sight will follow blindness ; joy will come 
after grief and pain. Our dead have only gone home 
before us, to the Land of Truth and Peace, where 
we shall presently join them. 

The frowns of fortune, the injustice of others, the 
insults of the strong, the stings of malice, are but 
petty things in the eternal life of man. There is 
little reason for hatred or for revenge. The evil 



208 ETERNALISM 

will go their own way downward. Nature's revenge 
is surer, and more exact in its justice, than our own. 

The individual should attend carefully to his own 
soul ; for nothing but his own self -degradation can 
really harm him. 

He who, in his life here, has done most to improve 
himself — his real self, his nature, his character — 
has been the most successful man who has ever lived 
on this earth. 

The conqueror of himself is greater than the con- 
queror of an empire ; for the empire is of time, while 
man is of eternity. 

He who has developed within himself a generous 
nature, an open mind, the philosophy of patience and 
courage, faith in himself, in his fellows, and in the 
Rightness of the Eternal Laws, is a greater victor 
than Bonaparte or Caesar. For this true and lofty 
man — the victor over himself — Death has no ter- 
rors ; for him the grave is but the open door from 
toil to rest, from war to peace. 

Those who secure wealth and power, and hold 
them to be the main objects of life, should know that 
they can strut and swagger but for a little hour on 
this temporary stage ; that they are only as other 
men, even as those in the meanest stations, or in the 
humblest life. 

The noblest soul in a great city may not be its 
most honored citizen ; but may indeed be a washer- 
woman, a drayman, or a newsboy. 



ETERNALISM 209 

" The honest man, though e'er sae poor, 
Is king o' men for a' that." 

The greatest hero is he who sacrifices, or has it in 
his nature to sacrifice, most for others. He who has 
acquired an heroic character is as much a real hero 
as any one whose name has become a household word, 
or who has been glorified in marble or in bronze. 

It even may be that he whose statue crowns the 
Trafalgar shaft in London, and that other immortal, 
in whose honor the tallest column on earth has been 
reared in Washington, were not really the greatest 
heroes of our race. For the battlefield is not the only 
stage on which true heroism can be displayed. 

The courageous ones in ordinary life — the men 
who carry cheerfully the burdens and sorrows of 
others — the women who fight patiently through long 
years for shelter, warmth, and food for their father- 
less children — the lonely and forlorn souls who walk 
in the straight road of duty and honor — all the 
honest, brave, helpful, and true-hearted — are also 
real heroes, and the more heroic because there is 
little rest in their long, prosaic battle ; because they 
seek no plaudits, and hope for no day when they will 
receive the homage of mankind. 

But the day will come — must come — when they 
who have acted nobly, seeking no approbation or 
glory, shall be glorified ; and when they who have 
played a coward's part shall be scorned. In the 
eternal life, every earnest and strong soul shall have 



210 ETERNALISM 

recognition, and every hypocrite and impostor shall 
be found out. 

All of man's real riches, power, and greatness are 
in his heart and mind, in his own character. His 
wealth is in his goodness and nobility ; his strength 
in his patience, courage, and thinking powers. 

The pauper who would give if he could is a philan- 
thropist ; and he who could die for man is a martyr 
and savior. By the Eternal Measurements man is 
exactly what he has made himself, and not what acci- 
dent has temporarily conferred upon him. The rank 
of souls is more definite and exact than the rank of 
any line of earthly nobles. 

" A prince can mak' a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man 's aboon his might." 

The philosophy of Eternalism is good for man. It 
alone maintains the accountability of man, the free- 
dom of man, the dignity of the soul of man — it is a 
powerful stimulus to the practice of morality, and to 
the study of the exact definitions of right and wrong 
in the affairs of individuals, of society, of the state, 
and between nations — it explains all things in 
harmony with our experience and natural feelings, 
without attributing inconsistency or injustice to the 
Eternal Order — it puts the responsibility for happi- 
ness or unhappiness upon ourselves — it affords the 
highest possible incentive for right living, and for 
the pursuit of knowledge — it dignifies and exalts 



ETERNALISM 211 

our conception of the order of Nature — it is in 
harmony with the oldest truths in Religion, and with 
the newest facts in science — it unfolds a new heaven 
and a new earth — it gives us a philosophy to sus- 
tain us in our hardest trials ; a hope to illumine our 
darkest hours ; a faith based on reason and under- 
standing. 

And finally, the philosophy of Eternalism — and 
it alone — enthrones Justice as the Supreme Law, 
the Fundamental Verity, the Divine Principle, of 
the Universe. 



PART VI 

ANSWERS TO CRITICS 



UPON the completion of the first draft of my 
part on " The Actual Meaning of Religion," 
I sent it to a list of Americans prominent in scien- 
tific, philosophical, or theological work, and mailed 
also to each a letter explaining the scope of my in- 
quiry. The letter closed with this sentence : " I am 
seeking criticism — sharp, vigorous, sincere fault- 
finding — for which I would be grateful." 

In answer to this request I received more than 
four hundred letters containing comments and criti- 
cisms. To the writers of these I . sent later a proof 
of the first draft of the remainder of the preceding 
matter and asked for further criticism, to which I 
received again a generous response. Many of the 
letters are lengthy and elaborate. Not a few of the 
writers commented on my proofs paragraph by para- 
graph, while others expressed their after-thoughts 
in later letters. My main thought has been attacked, 
with courtesy and toleration, from almost every point 
of view lying between and including the extremes of 
Materialism and orthodoxy. 

I am indebted to my critics for many suggestions 
which have been of value to me in my final revision, 
and particularly of the part on the meaning of Re- 



216 ETERNALISM 

ligion, which has been rewritten in the main, and 
altered in material, though not in vital, respects. 

Some of the criticisms have been answered in the 
revision of this volume, while others were met in 
parts of the original draft which were overlooked by 
my reviewers. The remaining criticisms of impor- 
tance I shall attempt to answer in the succeeding 
pages. When the same point is made by more than 
one of my correspondents, as is often the case, I have 
taken for discussion the statement which appears to 
me to be the clearest and strongest, or a group of 
the more important comments bearing on the topic 
in hand. 

It is fair to say also that my correspondents have 
not invariably antagonized my position. I have 
received many cordial expressions of partial approval 
from them, while a few have agreed with me wholly, 
or in the main. 

In quoting from my critics I shall not name them, 
having no permission to do so. While consent coidd 
probably be secured in most cases, it seems to me 
best that the discussion should be impersonal. 



ALL THEORIES DENYING PKE-EXISTENCE ARE 
THEORIES OF CREATIONISM AND FATALISM 

MUCH to my surprise I find little in the 
answers in defense of the old-time theories 
of Creation. Unless I have overlooked something, 
this is the only point bearing on that subject which 
I have received : 

" Creation does not mean or imply the formation of 
something out of nothing. God created the Universe from 
himself." 

" To form out of nothing " was the old meaning 
of Creation, and is still its fundamental definition. 
It is true that the conception of a time antecedent 
to Creation, when nothing was and something was 
not, is unthinkable. The theologians claim that the 
Creator always existed, even though the Universe 
did not. As F. W. Newman observes: "A God 
uncaused and existing from eternity is quite as in- 
comprehensible as a world uncaused and existing 
from eternity." 

The difficulty in building a structure upon no 
foundation is well illustrated in the story told by 
Professor James of the woman who described the 



218 ETERNALISM 

world as resting on a rock, and then explained that 
that rock was supported by another rock, and finally, 
when pushed with questions, said " it was rocks all 
the way down." 

Here is the theory of Traducianism : 

" The theory of Creation that you attack is the old one 
of original, absolute, immediate Creation. No Chris- 
tian evolutionist holds to that now. We believe in mediate 
and derivative Creation, and our theory is not subject 
to your argument that Creation necessitates Fatalism. 
Neither does our view of Providence logically lead to 
Fatalism or to Necessitarianism. What is attacked in 
your book is ' Creationism ' as taught by Aristotle, Jerome, 
Pelagius, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Reformers. 
But the view held to-day by those who are not bound by 
ancient creeds and traditions is Traducianism, both body 
and soul propagated by natural generation, but the first 
human soul only immediately created by God." 

u The whole doctrine of the direct Creation of souls by 
God has long been given up. If you will take the trouble 
to read the recent theologies, such as those by Dr. A. H. 
Strong, Dr. W. N. Clark, or Dr. E. H. Johnson, you will 
see that Traducianism is the accepted theory with regard 
to souls rather than Creationism." 

"There has always been in the Christian Church a 
recognized theory known as Traducianism, which is 
wholly distinct from Creationism. Moreover, great theo- 
logians, like Julius Midler, in his ' History of the Doctrine 
of Sin/ have strongly advocated theories of preexistence." 

The theory of Traducianism is an effort to relieve 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 219 

the Maker of the responsibility for the creation of 
vicious souls, and of the many other forms of injus- 
tice which follow upon the theory of Creationism. 
It is also a step, or a stage, in the direction of Natu° 
ralism. It is the advance of a great theological 
movement from grounds no longer tenable toward a 
position of security. At present it occupies an inter- 
mediate, and in some respects an unfortunate, posi- 
tion between Naturalism and Supernaturalism. It 
has lost logical connection with the old ground, and 
has not yet established complete rational harmony 
with the new. 

It is true that Julius Miiller, Origen, Scotus Eri- 
gena, and other theologians, as well as the Hebrew 
Kabbalists and the Cathari, have held theories of 
preexistence, and that Rothe denied the creation of 
the Universe. The belief in preexistence had made 
such progress among the early Christians that the 
Council of Constantinople, in the year 553, anathe- 
matized it in these words : 

" If any one shall teach a fabulous preexistence of souls 
and the consequence of this, a monstrous restoration, let 
him be accursed." 

Indeed Christianity acknowledges the fact of pre- 
existence in the reincarnation of Jesus. But the 
liberal theologians have been and still are limited in 
their progress by their efforts to harmonize old 
authority and error with new truth. It is impossible 



220 ETERNALISM 

to build rightly upon wrong foundations — to con- 
struct a theory of accountability, freedom, or Justice, 
upon the dogma of Creationism. 

" Can the doctrine of the Materialist, that the human 
body is a product of gradual evolution, be called a Cre- 
ation ? And if it arises through the action of unconscious 
force upon matter, through natural law, can it be said to 
have had a Maker ? " 

Let us not lose our bearings. Neither Traducian- 
ism, which seeks to limit the responsibility of the 
Creator for the nature of the created, nor evolution 
in the narrow sense in which it is accepted by the 
scientists who deny the evolution of the soul, throws 
any light upon the problem of justice for the indi- 
vidual, who remains under either theory an instru- 
ment that is made. 

If my character was made for me — by the fiat of 
a personal God, by the unconscious forces of Nature, 
or in any other way — then I was made, created, by a 
force or forces apart from me, and I am in no way 
responsible for what I was when I came into the 
world. And consequently all theories which deny 
the eternal preexistence of the soul are theories of 
Creationism and Fatalism. 



n 



RELIGION AND THE SENSE OF JUSTICE — THE 
PERVERSIONS OF RELIGION 

MANY correspondents deny that religious be- 
liefs could have originated in man's sense of 
Justice : 

" Justice to others I take to be a product of growing 
civilization, and the desire to establish a broad principle 
of Justice would be ingrafted on to the idea of Religion 
as a higher concept of the true functions or essence of 
religious faith." 

"Is it true that all, or almost all, men believe in that 
abstract thing which we call ' Justice ' and look for a future 
life in which it will be administered ? I think that the 
belief implies a degree of moral culture which by far the 
larger part of the race have not attained." 

" The primitive and semi-civilized man has a very 
imperfect sense of Justice. That nobler ideal only belongs 
to the highest civilization. I do not think it is demon- 
strable that the germ of the religious life began with an 
ideal sense of Justice. That, like all our other moral 
conceptions (whether innate or acquired), has grown from 
the beginning. We must not forget the law or method 
of evolution has operated in all departments of human 
activity and growth." 



222 ETERNALISM 

" While I fully recognize the element of Justice, retri- 
bution, and the operation of a spiritual law of cause and 
effect in the higher religions, especially in those of India, 
I do not believe such a thought would occur before a 
people had arrived at the thought of a world-order and a 
world-process." 

" Faith in Eternal Justice is great support, in many 
minds, for the doctrine of immortality, now since some 
sense of Justice has begun to dawn, but I cannot conceive 
it had anything to do with the early belief, for Justice, 
eternal or otherwise, is a late conception. Not many 
people have it now." 

I have not claimed that " the germ of the religious 
life began with an ideal sense of Justice," but rather 
that religious beliefs were " born with the awakening 
of man's moral senses." The sense of Justice in 
primitive man was crude, and so were his religious 
beliefs. And yet in his most grotesque rites we 
detect a rudimentary sense of Justice. The Papuan 
Islander prays : " Compassionate father ! Here is 
some food for you to eat ; be kind to us on account 
of it." And this is the prayer of the Delaware 
Indian : " Have pity on me and protect my life, and 
I will bring thee an offering" 

Offerings, homage, praise, sacrifice, involve a low 
sense of Justice — the belief that the gods will return 
service for service. 

It is not true that primitive man had no sense of 
Justice. " The lowest being," says Kenan, "prefi 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 223 

to be just rather than unjust." The dog, even, has 
gratitude and fidelity, two noble manifestations of 
Justice. 

I have distinctly claimed that primitive man was 
incapable of reasoning out the deeper meaning of his 
religious beliefs, which were instinctive, and can be 
comprehended only in the light of the evolution of 
all belief. 

Nor have the foremost investigators of our own 
time yet reached an agreement concerning the rational 
meaning of Religion. They are wide apart in their 
conclusions. I am forced to believe that religious 
faith has been and still is instinctive in the minds of 
men. In no other way can we account for the fun- 
damental harmonies which we find in all of its mani- 
festations, -and in spite of its numerous superficial 
contradictions. 

Here are more objections, and from a different 
point of view, to the identification of Justice with 
Religion : 

"Justice was certainly not the inherent idea of the 
Greek and Roman Religions, and Justice alone is certainly 
not the main aim of those Religions which, like the Chris- 
tian Religion, teach forgiveness and love." 

" When you say that the desire for Justice is older than 
the arts and science, etc., it seems to me that you forget 
all the monstrous injustice of the past, the bondage and 
slavery, persecution and bloody wars that have been 
waged by the strong in exercising their power and wreak- 
ing their vengeance upon the weak." 



224 ETERNALISM 

"We are met by the fact in history that, from the 
savage up to civilized man professing Christianity, Mo- 
hammedanism, and other faiths, some of the most religious 
have practiced the rankest kinds of injustice in the eyes 
of all except themselves. If their idea of Religion had 
been Justice, they would not have practiced the inquisi- 
tion, deprived their fellow men of life, liberty, and personal 
happiness, and freedom. In fact, I doubt if Religion in 
its origin had anything to do with morals or the moral 
sense. Certainly in all its history, even to the present 
moment, the so-called Religion of men has been in many 
cases entirely divorced from ethics and morals. The most 
pious have often been the most immoral, the most worship- 
ful the most unethical.' ' 

" In criticism of your position that * Eternal Justice is 
the actual meaning of Religion/ I would call attention to 
the indisputable fact that almost every form of Religion, 
including certain well known types of Christianity, includes 
an effort to escape from or to avoid Eternal Justice, 
ostensibly at least. And as I understand it, the sacrificial 
system in all Religions is a deliberate effort by the aid of 
propitiation to secure either something more or something 
less than absolute Justice." 

These writers have fallen into the common error 
of confusing real Religion with the perversions of 
Religion. The latter bear the same relation to 
Religion that license bears to liberty, charlatanism 
to science, quackery to medicine, pedantry to learn- 
ing. We would not hold the science of medicine 
responsible for the ignorance and superstition which 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 225 

have attended its development — nor astronomy for 
the vagaries of astrology — nor art, learning, liberty, 
honor, and truth, for their perversions. We know 
that all is not learning that pretends to be learning, 
and all is not truth that claims to be truth ; but 
there are many who seem to be unable to under- 
stand that much which claims to be Religion is 
really Irreligion. 

That which is highest and noblest in its essence 
is that which is the worst perverted. And so it is 
that every known form of superstition, dishonesty, 
brutality, and injustice has masqueraded in the form 
of Religion. For this reason it has been difficult to 
determine the actual meaning of Religion, to sepa- 
rate the gold from the dross, the diamond from the 
mud, the true from the false. . 



Ill 



THE THEORY OF DIVINE LOVE AND MERCY — 
NATURALISM AGAINST SUPERNATURALISM 



S 



OME of my most earnest critics place love and 
mercy above Justice : 



" While your great affirmation of Justice as the key- 
note of things kindles me, I feel that the word gives light 
without heat. That light correlates with heat I don't 
doubt, but you don't bring that out. The heat word — 
and most men need it — is love. Your doctrine seems 
like a New Calvinism — of course of the nineteenth 
instead of the seventeenth and the fifth century. Calvin- 
ism affirmed the Eternal Justice as strongly as we." 

" The exaltation of Justice as the supreme law contra- 
dicts the loftiest instincts of the soul. From infancy to 
age love perpetually intervenes to save us from the conse- 
quences of Justice. Justice is only fulfilled in love. 
Drummond has well shown that sacrifice has its place in 
the evolutionary process. 

" If the hope of humanity rests simply upon the unwaver- 
ing work of strict Justice, it is faint indeed either for this 
life or the next. 

u You have wholly omitted from your survey that im- 
mense factor of love which the world over holds the 
highest place in human thought, and forms the worthiest 
conception of the Supreme Being." 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 227 

" Justice, blind Justice, knows no heart, no pity. It 
does not heap coals of fire on the culprit. It is the harsh- 
ness of the inexorable law of Justice which the human 
heart is called upon to smooth over for its fellow hearts. 
Forgiveness rather than strict accounting is the prescrip- 
tion of Religion." 

" To my mind Religion includes mercy as well as Jus- 
tice, for it regards the frailty of man as well as his strength. 
The idea of sacrifice inheres in every concept of Religion, 
and sacrifice rests upon the accepted knowledge of sin, 
weakness, and need of Divine mercy." 

" Religion is the philosophy of our relation to God. 
The essential principle of that relation on the part of God 
is mercy and not Justice. 

" Under your system where shall the sinner and the 
ungodly appear ? Do you not believe in the forgiveness 
of sin ? 

" But you do in matters between human beings. If a 
child does wrong and goes to his mother and says he is 
sorry, she takes him to her heart and kisses away his 
tears and says, ' I forgive you.' She cannot, it may be, 
prevent the physical pain which follows as a natural 
result if, for example, the child has eaten green and for- 
bidden fruit, but she knows, and the boy knows, the wide 
distinction between penalty and punishment, and even a 
child will bear the natural penalty of transgression with 
heroism if only mother will smile upon him again and lift 
upon him the light of a reconciled countenance. 

" Now, this mutual disposition of penitence on the one 
side, and of forgiveness on the other, is natural and uni- 
versal, but it is not just ; it transcends Justice and postu- 
lates personality." 



228 ETERNALISM 

Under all of the preceding thoughts lies one fun- 
damental misconception, which might be expressed 
by each writer as follows : " The divine order is as 
I would have made it. The attitude of God to man 
is as that of a parent to a child." 

But is the divine order as you would have made 
it ? Would you have sent a cyclone to Galveston to 
destroy, mutilate, and kill ? Would you have pro- 
duced a Napoleon to ravage Europe, and other pow- 
erful and ambitious criminals to involve the world 
in senseless and useless wars? Would you have 
sent a famine to torture and destroy millions of ani- 
mals and human beings in India? Would you 
permit ignorance, poverty, degradation, slavery, and 
crime to exist ? 

Would a loving mother cause her child to be born 
in the slums, to suffer for lack of good air and food? 
or to grow up under vile influences ? or to die of 
slow torture from disease or famine ? or to become 
in the end an imbecile, a lunatic, or a criminal ? 

We cannot deny that all that exists belongs to 
the divine order. We cannot say that a Supernat- 
ural Ruler of the Universe is responsible for pleasant 
showers and not for floods, for favorable winds and 
not for cyclones, for good and not for evil. 

k ' You deny mercy, but it exists, l>oth in Nature and in 
man. There arc natural antidotes for natural poisons. 
There is a tree whose leaves are lor the healing of the 
nations. Parents forgive their children. Whence haw 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 229 

they derived this power of forgiveness ? It is natural. 
Over against the law of the survival of the fittest stands 
the equally certain law of the protection of the most 
unfit. The babe cannot i struggle for existence ' alone. 
The mother is Nature's ' friend at court.' The 'law' 
therefore is not a stranger to love. There is a ' law of 
love/ " 

Mercy exists in man, and so does mercilessness. 
Love exists also, and so does hate. There are anti- 
dotes and there are poisons. There are trees that 
heal and others that kill. There are things whole- 
some and things venomous, things uplifting and 
things degrading. The unfit are protected, and they 
are also destroyed. 

If we say that the Creator is merciful because 
man is merciful, we must also say that the Creator 
is merciless because man is merciless. If we say 
that the Creator loves because man loves, we must 
say also that the Creator hates because man hates. 
If we say that the Creator is good because he sends 
antidotes and protects the unfit, we must say also 
that the Creator is bad because he sends poisons and 
destroys the unfit. 

If man's mercy and love must be accredited to the 
Creator, and we must consequently say, " The Cre- 
ator is merciful and loving," then man's hate, folly, 
cruelty, and brutality must also be accredited to the 
Creator, and we must say, " The Creator is hateful, 
foolish, cruel, and brutal." 



230 ETERNALISM 

We face on all sides the small conception of the 
cosmic order — the measuring of God's motives and 
power, by man's motives and power — the assump- 
tion that God does as man would do in his place, 
that God is a greater man. 

The reader has doubtless observed the fire of ear- 
nestness and conviction in the critical paragraphs 
which I have quoted in this chapter. And these 
writers speak not merely as individuals, but as rep- 
resentatives of the fundamental doctrine concerning 
divine love and mercy in the Christian Religion. It 
would be folly to say that a doctrine held with great 
zeal by a religious body so large and important as 
the Christian Church has no rational significance. 
What is its deeper meaning ? 

We of the Western world have been taught, as 
were our ancestors before us, that we and all things 
are under the dominion of a human God, who is the 
cause and source of all that is, and who is personally 
cognizant of every act and occurrence, small and 
great, mean and important. 

The mind of the individual may be illogical, or 
weak in its logic, but the thought of mankind, the 
instinctive wisdom of the years and centuries, U 
logical And this is the logic of mankind, of the 
ages, applied to Supernaturalism : " If the Creator 
is responsible for the good in the world, he is also 
responsible for the evil. If we credit him with 
Buddha and Christ, we must credit him also with 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 231 

Nero and Napoleon. If he has sent wisdom, he has 
also sent ignorance. He has created philosophers 
and saviors, brutes and murderers. He is the source 
of goodness and love, and also of ingratitude, lust, 
hate, and crime." 

Theology was forced long ago to answer the logic 
of the ages, and this is its actual answer, stripped of 
all mystifications : " In the end God will atone, must 
atone, for all the wrong which he has done in tolerat- 
ing degradation, cruelty, torture, and other forms of 
evil. He will do this by extending his mercy and 
love on easy terms to mankind." 

The doctrine of God's mercy and love is an attempt 
to acquit God of the wrongs and crimes which the 
dogmas of Creationism and Supernaturalism place 
logically at his door. It is the theory that he must 
atone with mercy for his own injustice. In the last 
analysis it is a rough theory of Justice. 

My critics, it will be noted, deny that Justice is 
the chief attribute of God, and one or two of them 
belittle the part which Justice plays in the divine 
order. These views are in harmony with the belief 
in a personal and supernatural God. 

The supernatural conception of a Supreme Per- 
sonality is always, and doubtless necessarily, a 
monarchic conception. It depicts God as an earthly 
autocrat, as one who has created the Universe and 
the laws and facts of Nature, who alters, improves, 
and adjusts these laws at will, who is engaged con- 



232 ETERNALISM 

stantly in the vast labor of keeping the Universe in 
order, in regulating the temperature, the weather, 
the crops, the minutest affairs of the earth, and more 
particularly of mankind. 

And since, as I have shown, the logic of the ages 
— when it builds upon the theory of the complete 
supremacy of a personal and supernatural Deity — 
holds the Creator accountable for the evil, while 
accrediting him with the good, in the world, there 
arises necessarily the conviction that the Creator has 
failed in the administration of Justice, that he is not 
a God of Justice. But the religious instinct of man 
demands Justice, and he falls back on the theory 
that in the end the Creator will right things, atone 
for the wrongs which he has tolerated or authorized, 
by forgiveness, love, and mercy. 

And so it is that, in the creeds of Supernaturalism 
and Anthropomorphism, Justice holds a minor and 
even an insignificant place, while ceremony, suppli- 
cation, genuflection, homage, praise, and humiliation 
are primary and vital. The theory of these creeds 
as they come down to us is that God is a great mon- 
arch who is pleased and influenced by these ril 
and offerings. 

Supernaturalism has dealt largely in the past, and 
continues to deal, with the difficulties, labors, sor- 
rows, troubles, and mistakes of the Gods. The God 
of the Hebrew revelation waited in silence and lone- 
liness through an eternity before he created any- 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 233 

thing ; and after he had created a globe with the life 
thereon, he was so disappointed with his work that 
he wiped out nearly all life with a flood. And again 
he became incensed with his creatures, and was rec- 
onciled with mankind only through the sacrifice of 
his only begotten son. 

And so go all of the myths in which men have 
built God in the image of themselves and endowed 
him with human sentiments, limitations, passions, and 
weaknesses, and with their own ignorant conceptions 
of the order of Nature. 

It is true that advanced theologians and enlight- 
ened churchmen have abandoned the theory that 
God has human passions, weaknesses, or other im- 
perfections. They would picture him as man-like, 
though perfect. And yet many of them hold tena- 
ciously to the theory that he is the embodiment 
of sympathy, mercy, and love, These are human 
weaknesses when used in judgment. We do not 
permit a judge to sit in judgment over his own son, 
or even his friend. He is a poor judge in whom 
sympathy and mercy are stronger than Justice. 

It is a presumption to say that God is a man, or 
man-like, or even a glorified and perfect man. It 
involves the assumption that no other living things 
are higher than man. We do not know this. It is 
conceivable that man, compared with higher life and 
intelligence in the Universe, is quite insignificant. 

Our later conception of God broadens, and will 



234 ETERNALISM 

doubtless continue to broaden. Science is undermin- 
ing the foundations of Supernaturalism. Eclipses 
and comets are correctly predicted, and even the 
weather is foretold within reasonable limitations. 
Effect follows cause without interruption. We know 
of no interruption ; doubtless none has been or will 
be. Every fact which can be brought under obser- 
vation testifies to an unbroken natural order, and 
not one to a supernatural government of the Uni- 
verse. 

There are numberless reasons for believing, and 
none for disbelieving, that the natural order is in 
itself just and perfect. Science is doing more to 
elevate our conception of God than is Theology, for 
science reveals a divine order which is perfect, while 
Theology holds to a divine system which has been 
changed, and is imperfect. 

We do not know that it is now, or ever will be, 
possible for man to penetrate the divine mystery 
at the heart of the world. But this much is plain : 
that we should be done in this time of enlightenment 
with the old dull, childish, grotesque conceptions of 
God, handed down to us from the dim past, which 
now discredit and scandalize Religion ; and that we 
cannot err widely if, awaiting further light, we con- 
ceive of God as the Supreme Power or Principle of 
[tightness, which is manifest to us only in the order 
of Nature, and that the order of Nature was as it is 
now before this globe was, before our solar system — 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 235 

that it is without beginning or end — that it needs no 
repairing, no tinkering — that it is not as a clock 
to be wound, or a road to be improved — that it is 
just, perfect, and changeless. 



IV 

ACCOUNTABILITY TO LAW — THE CATERPILLAR 
AND BUTTERFLY— OTHER CRITICISMS 

/CONCERNING accountability to law: 

^-^ " I fail to see how a man can be accountable to 
any kind of a law. I can see how he may be accountable 
to the power which made the law. No law is self -enfor- 
cing. That eternal or temporal justice may be done an 
executive is necessary. No law exists without a maker. 
That eternal justice may be done there must be the eternal 
law — i. e., a law which is in force through eternity, and 
the Eternal Executive. " 

" No law ever can administer itself, law being merely a 
mode of action and not a being, personal or impersonal. 
If man believes himself accountable, he must feel himself 
accountable to some being or beings higher than himself." 

" Law cannot administer itself. Law is but an expres- 
sion of force, or power, or will. Back of all law must be 
something or somebody, else there is no law, much less any 
administration of law." 

If one should step off a high cliff, or throw himself 
in front of an advancing engine, or swallow poison, 
the result would prove that he is accountable to the 
Law, and that the Law administers itself, promptly 
and invariably, " in an unbroken series of causes and 
effects." 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 237 

If one puts his hand in the fire, he does not assume 
that God punishes him by burning it. He knows 
that he has violated a natural law, and taken the 
penalty. 

We have discovered in endless ways that we are 
accountable to the Law — to the natural order — 
and that its penalties and rewards are sure and 
invariable. 

In the comparison of human law with natural law, 
we have again the narrow view of the cosmic order — 
the assumption that the movements of the stars, the 
measureless force of gravitation, the influences of 
evolution, the equilibrium in things infinitely great 
and infinitely minute, can be comprehended only 
through our better understanding of the origin and 
enforcement of man's laws and man's systems of 
justice on this earth. 

While the law of man is imperfect and its execu- 
tion defective, the law of Nature is perfect and its 
execution invariable. We find in the natural order 
no evidence of fear, compassion, reverence, favor, 
sympathy, or affection. Fire has the same effect 
upon king and slave, rich and poor — upon the good, 
the vile, the innocent, the ignorant, the beautiful, 
the ugly. It will sear the fairest face in the world 
as readily as the plainest. The insurance rate is the 
same for the atheist and the Christian. 

We have no real reason to doubt, and every reason 
to believe, that moral penalties and rewards are ad- 



238 ETERNALISM 

ministered exactly as physical penalties and rewards 
are administered — through the invariable, just, and 
perfect order of cause and effect. 



" Justice ! Do we not know that the rich are never 
convicted, that the guilty often escape, that the innocent 
have been hanged, that there are liars who are never 
found out, and that one may think as much evil as he 
pleases without impairing his moral standing among his 
neighbors ? " 

Again we have the limited view, to which the 
Eternalist answers : " One can do no wrong without 
immediate and exact punishment, for the evil he does 
is registered instantly in his own nature and char- 
acter. If the evil be small, he takes a short step 
downward ; if it be great, he takes a long stride 
toward hell. The individual may hide his sins from 
his fellows, but he cannot escape cause and effect, 
cannot avoid his own degradation." 



" Is not Eternalism merely Buddhism in a new dress ? 
Wherein do they differ ? " 

Whether Buddhism accepts the beginningless ex- 
istence of the soul is a question I am not prepared 
to answer. There can be no doubt, however, that 
the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana is a denial of the 
endless existence of the individual. Hence this fun- 
damental distinction exists between Buddhism and 
Eternalism: Buddhism is a doctrine of the limited 
existence of the soul ; Eternalism is the theory that 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 239 

the existence of the individual soul is beginningless 
and endless, unlimited, eternal. 



" I admit your chief claim — that Eternalism is appar- 
ently a doctrine of Infinite Justice, while Creationism is 
apparently a doctrine of Infinite Injustice — and yet I 
cannot accept Eternalism, because it appears to me to be 
a denial of a personal and loving God, a Great Friend, to 
whom we can appeal in time of trouble. Deprived of 
this consolation, lif e would be hopeless and wretched. So 
at least it appears to me." 

The belief in an Invisible Friend, or in Invisible 
Friends, is very old and nearly universal. I do 
not believe that it is wholly groundless, and I can 
conceive that it may be, in important respects, true. 

As intimated elsewhere, I believe in the theory of 
Superhuman Powers and Intelligences — that in this 
boundless Universe there must be beings as much 
superior to us as we are superior to the life below us, 
and as much above our present comprehension as we 
are above the comprehension of the insect. It may 
be that these Great Souls, or some of them, exercise a 
powerful influence upon affairs here, and that their 
help can be gained through noble and unselfish prayer, 
accepting prayer in its higher sense as an expression 
of fortitude, aspiration, or faith in ultimate Justice. 

If we accept the theory of Invisible Great Souls, 
it does not follow, however, that any one is a Su- 
preme Intelligence. The doctrine of one Supreme 
Intelligence, or Personality, necessarily all-powerful, 



240 ETERNALISM 

must include supreme purpose, design, pre-determi- 
nation, Fatalism. It robs the individual of merit 
and demerit, of accountability and freedom, and 
transfers to the Supreme Personal Intelligence the 
responsibility for all that is. 

" Religion is usually defined as the faith in, or recog- 
nition of, God. But as the word God has no clear or 
definite meaning, it appears to me that Religion, being 
based on the belief in an indefinable God, also has no 
definite meaning — that Religion means one thing to one 
man and in one phase of human development, and quite 
a different thing to other men and in other stages of social 
evolution.' ' 

Back of all the varying conceptions of God there 
must be, as I have suggested before, a fundamental 
harmony. The reaching out toward a mysterious 
and superhuman power must have a common motive, 
otherwise the reaching out would not be universal. 
I believe that God, whether conceived as a ghost, a 
fetish, an idol, a personality, or a principle, means 
always the power that rights things. The low man 
has a low comprehension of Justice, and a degraded 
view of God ; the high man has a high comprehen- 
sion of Justice, and a noble ideal of God. 

I would define the word God as the idealization 
of each soul's conception of Divine Order, Right- 
ncss, Justice. The highest and noblest idealization 
of these principles must be that which is nearest to 
tlir truth. 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 241 

" I do not follow you when you say that ' the principle 
of Justice ... is Omnipotence and Omnipresence.' ' 

Justice is in every manifestation of cause and 
effect, and is therefore omnipotent and omnipresent. 



" If we all are made of the same soul stuff and have 
like variety of experiences, why should one get any start 
of another ? You do not seem to answer that. Responsi- 
bility is all right, but a ball projected by a skillful hand 
will reach its mark. So would any number. The im- 
pelling force of the universe ought to do the same." 

I cannot accept the theory that " we are made," 
that each is as " a ball projected by a skillful hand." 
These are the terms of Creationism and Fatalism, 
not of Eternalism. Fatalism is the doctrine that 
man's destiny is controlled from without, by forces 
external to him ; Eternalism is the doctrine that his 
destiny is controlled from within, by himself. 



" ' The fit advance, the unfit decline.' The soul loses 
its powers through disuse or abuse as the physical organ 
deteriorates through disease. But if you allow of decline 
forever and ever, won't you reach a point where decline 
is no longer possible ? Can you argue the persistent 
decline without stepping on the toes of annihilation ? A 
limb, if disused through a series of generations, shrinks 
to nothingness. Shall we not predicate the same of the 
soul?" 

" If devolution may go so far that all depths are open 
to man, must it not come to practical annihilation or to a 



242 ETERNALISM 

point so low that, like the point perfection, we may exclude 
from our thought all conception of such souls or of their 
value ? " 

I can conceive of no point where degradation be- 
comes annihilation, nor where progress becomes per- 
fection. The infinite has no boundary. 

Even if a soul should sink so low as to become an 
unconscious and invisible atom of matter, nearly all 
scientific minds are agreed that it would remain, or 
become, an immortal. It is an odd fact, which I 
have commented on before, that scientific men, includ- 
ing the Agnostics and Materialists, are agreed that 
the meanest thing of which they have any knowledge, 
an atom, is preexistent, after-existent, deathless, 
eternal. They acknowledge Eternalism on the low- 
est plane of life. 

" If a human soul has become what it is through its 
antecedent activities as a brute soul, and prior to that as 
a reptile and amebean soul, was it not necessitated in 
those activities ? If necessitated, how can it be responsible 
for what it has now become as the result of that former 
experience ? And what justice is there in its present 
limitations and sufferings if the only defense of Justice is 
the theory that man's present self is the product of his 
former actions ? " 

I do not admit that the soul of the individual has 
evolved upon the same definite lines as the human 
race in its physical development on this earth ; to 
do so would be an admission that the destiny of the 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 243 

individual is controlled from without, which is the 
theory of Fatalism, not of Eternalism. Nor do I 
conceive that the soul of the individual is necessarily 
advancing. That also would be a doctrine of Fatal- 
ism. I believe that some souls are advancing, and 
others receding, in freedom. 

Evolution has its narrow interpretations and dog- 
mas as well as Theology. There are scientific men 
who do not yet admit completely the self-evident 
fact that the natural order includes devolution as 
well as evolution — that, on the physical side, all 
things grow, advance, ripen, decline, deteriorate, and 
undergo transformation. 

The individual, I conceive, must also advance or 
decline, but having the marvelous powers of con- 
sciousness and intelligence, he can choose his way 
— to degradation or purification, to the depths or 
heights. 

u By Justice I assume that you mean, as I do, the uni- 
versal adjustment of universal force and substance. It is 
apparent that the organism of Nature could not exist 
except for such ceaseless and errorless adjustment. There- 
fore in the fact of universal self-existence we must 
encounter a certain phase of Necessitarianism. I wonder 
if this is included in your reproach of Fatalism, as can- 
celing man's accountability." 

I claim that man is free in vital respects, but not 
in all respects. The Fatalist must assert logically 
that man is free in no respect. Man is under many 



244 ETERNALISM 

physical limitations here, and he must be forever 
subject to the order of Nature. But I conceive that 
the physical limitations are temporary, and that the 
order of Nature is just, not unjust, and that under 
this just order man works out his own damnation or 
salvation in freedom. 



" I do not quite see how it follows that if a man must 
attend so carefully to his own soul there is much place for 
consideration of other souls. Is it a selfish thing ? " 

As the Bishop of Ripon says, " All self-affirmation, 
self-preservation, self-possession, self-mastery, all 
effort to make the best of self, is not selfishness." 

The theory of Eternalism builds upon the assump- 
tion that man makes his own character. One can 
build character only through unselfishness — through 
love, kindness, generosity, sympathy, good-will, high- 
mindedness, patience, fortitude, toleration, rectitude, 
justice. Selfishness, on the other hand, degrades 
character. 



" Nor do I quite see how, if life is a constant succession 
of births and deaths, and a continual struggle to rise 
higher, or a constant falling back, death can be said to 
have no terror, or the grave to be but i the open door 
from toil to rest, from war to peace.' I do not see how 
there can be any rest or peace worthy of the name in a 
constant round or succession of births and deaths." 

We do not know that life includes " a constant 
round or succession of births and deaths." Nearly 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 245 

all theories of reincarnation assume that the life in 
the flesh is an incident, and not the whole, of the life 
of the individual. It may be that exemption from 
a return to the physical life can be earned. We do 
not know, and cannot even imagine, the possibilities 
of the ascending life. There may be peace and 
security there passing comprehension, and happiness 
of which we have no present conception. 

We need not appeal to our imagination to find 
conditions under which peace and happiness can be 
secured. There are high souls among us who, in 
spite of difficulty and trial, poverty and privation, 
pain and sorrow, pursue the even tenor of their way, 
in courage and hopefulness, without murmur or com- 
plaint. We know that courage overcomes trouble, 
and that faith in the rightness of the Eternal Order 
is a balm for every sorrow. And this courage and 
faith are attainable here and now. 



" The butterfly and caterpillar may serve as an analogy, 
but not as a proof. The caterpillar does not die ; or, if it 
does, there 's no butterfly. But for the butterfly death 
does i end all,' and so the argument breaks. 

" The chrysalis is very different from a dead caterpillar. 
It preserves the power of sensation and motion." 

I do not claim that the caterpillar actually dies, 
nor do I believe that man really dies. That which 
is called death is transformation, I hold. The cater- 
pillar, after its transformation, no longer exists, in a 



246 ETERNALISM 

physical sense. To our eye it is not visible. There 
is no caterpillar. In its place is a very different thing 
physically, a butterfly. What has become of the 
caterpillar ? My critic and I agree that it is not dead. 
There has been no death. The caterpillar survives 
in the butterfly. Is the butterfly, then, a caterpillar ? 
By no means. The body of the caterpillar is unlike 
the body of the butterfly. One is an ugly, creeping 
worm ; the other is a flying creature of rare brilliancy 
and beauty. In this change we perceive that there 
are two physical bodies, with only one animating 
principle. The life in the body of the caterpillar 
has passed into the body of the butterfly. While 
the worm has ceased to exist in a physical sense, in 
an actual sense it still lives in the butterfly. The 
worm survives the passing of its body. 

Has the worm, then, an after-existence ? Yes ; it 
lives again in the body of the butterfly. Is this the 
very first existence of the butterfly ? No ; it preex- 
isted in the body of the worm. This is an actual and 
tangible case of preexistence and after-existence. At 
the least it proves, as I have said before, that preexist- 
ence and after-existence belong to the order of Nature. 
Its significance may be belittled by those who dwell 
upon the details only of phenomena, but will not be by 
those who recognize the essential harmony in all of 
Nature's ways and facts, and the great part which 
analogy plays in scientific reasoning. 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 247 

" If the soul's sins are its own alone and the vicious are 
attracted to the vicious, why do good people have bad chil- 
dren or the reverse ? " 

No one is wholly good, or wholly bad. In one 
mood parents may attract a soul that is in harmony 
with the evil in their natures, and at another 
time attract one that is in harmony with their good 
qualities. 

" If this present system of things is so unjust, and there 
is nothing but this magnificent system of things, this mighty 
Force, this Nature which brought me here — if this, I say, 
is so unjust now, what proof have I that it will ever re- 
verse itself and become just ? The present injustice — 
apparent injustice at least — seems almost an argument 
against the establishment of Justice at any time or any- 
where. " 

It is unnecessary to assume that the order of 
Nature must be reversed, or that life hereafter will 
differ materially from life here, to establish Justice. 
Time is the essential factor in Eternal Justice — life 
heretofore to explain the inequalities and apparent 
injustice here, and life hereafter to give further op- 
portunity for adjustment. The life here probably 
gives some indication of the life hereafter. We 
should remember, however, that the present life is 
full of change and transformation — from night to 
day, from storm to sunshine, from infancy to child- 
hood, to youth, to maturity, to old age ; from ob- 
scurity to fame, from war to peace — and that the 



248 ETERNALISM 

departure from a wornout physical body may involve 
equally startling changes. 



" Creation, you say in substance, determines constitu- 
tion and character. These determine choices and actions. 
Therefore the Creator predestines the entire history of each 
being that he creates. But if the assumption be true that 
constitution and character determine conduct, what becomes 
of your doctrine of freedom ? Let it be admitted that man 
was not created, but got his constitution and character in 
some other way by his own actions in a former state of 
existence, let us say. Nevertheless he has them, and they 
are just what they are. How, then, if they completely 
determine conduct, can he be free ? " 

My critic has failed to weigh accurately the broad 
distinction between the fatalistic theory that the 
character of the individual is made for him, and the 
eternalistic theory that his character is made by him. 
If man's character is made for him, then we must 
abandon the theory that he is free or accountable. 
If, on the other hand, he has made his own character, 
we must admit that he has made it in freedom, and 
that he can continue in freedom to undermine and 
impair it, or to upbuild, improve, and strengthen it. 



" I have searched in vain for your definition of the word 
' soul ' and for your exact meaning when you refer to the 

relations of 'soul' and body." 

The best definition of the word "soul" is found, 
I believe, in the common and instinctive belief of 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 249 

mankind, in which the soul is recognized as the real 
man, the individual, the I, the actual self. The 
individual does not have a soul; he is a soul. In 
this common belief the body is to the soul as the 
clothing to the body, as the house in which one lives, 
even as the prison in which one is confined. As 
clothing and housing limit the freedom of the body, 
so does the body limit the freedom of the soul. 



THE QUESTION OF MEMORY — CONSCIOUS IM- 
MORTALITY A THING TO BE EARNED 



T 



HE lapse in memory : 



: If I preexisted, the extinction of memory is a 
practical extinction of being. It is the same as if I were 
constituted anew of unconscious materials." 

There are numerous cases on record of individuals 
who, through disease or accident, ha've had all mem- 
ory of their past obliterated, to be restored again 
after many years. We do not say that these persons 
lost their identity with their memory. And we find 
in these cases, and in many other facts, evidences 
that memory is often lost and that it may be restored. 
Because I do not remember what happened last night 
when I was asleep, I do not deny the individual con- 
tinuity of my life, or say that my soul failed to pass 
on from yesterday. 

" If throughout these transformations I do not recognize 
myself, if I cannot always say it is I, do you not see that 
immortality is no more to me than to the atoms that make 
up a block of wood ? " 

" Now I desire to appear again. Death is to me, as to 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 251 

you, simply a change from one estate to another, but in 
the change do not let my peculiar make-up be lost. If 
you do, I have no interest in the proceeding." 

I will answer in the language of the poet : 

" Not in my way nor in your way 
Does the cause of truth march on." 

The truth is not always as we would have it. The 
theory of evolution is repugnant in many of its 
aspects. Many people still deny it because they do 
not like it. 

" Since here we are on the whole unconscious of any 
previous existence, then the deduction would be natural 
that in a successive existence to this we shall be quite as 
unconscious of the present, and therefore wholly insensible 
of any results either of gains or losses ; hence the conclu- 
sion would be, ' Live simply for to-day.' " 

It is not true that all are unconscious of a pre- 
vious existence, or that no evidence of such an exist- 
ence is found in the memory of men. One of my 
critics writes as follows : 

" The only shred of testimony the theory in question 
has in its favor is the feeling that has come to us all, per- 
haps, some time in life, ' I have been here before.' This 
can be explained as well, perhaps, upon some other hypoth- 
esis." 

The preceding quotation is an admission that the 
consciousness of a past life is not unusual. Another 
of my critics says : 



252 ETERNALISM 

" Let me just add one word which will favor your the- 
ory. I know a man who told me he could remember his 
life in a previous existence. He told me he could dis- 
tinctly remember living two thousand years ago ; that in 
that previous existence he was a Russian, and he felt that 
he could recall particular incidents of that life. He was 
a man sane and rational in all ways." 

I introduce the foregoing items of evidence because 
they come from sources adverse to the theory of pre- 
existence. A formidable mass of similar evidence 
exists, and while it may not be in itself conclusive, 
we cannot say that there is no evidence. The fact 
that I do not remember, and that most of us do not 
remember, does not refute the evidence of those who 
do remember. 

To those who reject the theory of preexistence on 
the ground that they have no recollection of a past 
life, or that their memory is faint or inconclusive, I 
commend this thought, which strikes me with great 
force : Complete conscious immortality is a thing 
to be earned. This is a proposition in harmony with 
the theory of Eternalism, which considers the indi- 
vidual as an achievement, not a creation, as having 
earned all that he is, and being in the line of further 
advancement, of gaining all that he needs, all that 
he aspires to, and of discovering on still higher planes, 
now incomprehensible to us, other needs and aspira- 
tions yet to bear harvest. 

Some of our evolutionists assume that humanity 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 253 

is the highest product of Nature. This, also, is a 
narrow conception. The distinction between the 
highest man and the lowest man, as we now know 
them, is very great. And the distinction between 
our highest man and what the individual can be in 
the limitless future must be measureless. 

Evolution shows to us the fruitfulness of aspira- 
tion — that the dullest even can get what they need. 
The eyeless fishes in the Mammoth Cave have no 
sight because they have never felt the stimulation of 
light. The beaver made a shovel of his tail because 
he needed a shovel. Man, on his physical side, is 
the result of the unconscious and instinctive aspira- 
tions of the life below him. And our civilization is 
the harvest of the up-reaching of some of the indi- 
viduals who have preceded us. 

Who shall say that we have reached the end? 
that " Finis" is written upon the history of the 
ascent of the individual ? that the law of evolution 
no longer bears upon us ? that we shall respond no 
more to our own needs and aspirations ? 

One evolutionist at least, M. Guyau, has perceived 
clearly that the evolution of the individual is not 
completed. He utters his thought in these inspiring 
words : 

" Evolution may be conceived of as resulting in beings 
capable of proposing to themselves a certain aim, and of 
dragging Nature after them toward it. Natural selection 
would thus finally be converted into a moral, and, in some 



254 ETERNALISM 

sort, divine selection. It can, in effect, produce species 
and types superior to humanity as we know it ; it is not 
probable that we embody the highest achievement possible 
in life, thought, and love. Who knows, indeed, but that 
evolution may be able to bring forth — nay, has not 
already brought forth — immortals ? " 

If evolution teaches us anything clearly it is this : 
The progress of the individual is not ended, his 
evolution is not completed. And we may doubt that 
there ever will be an end to the response of Nature 
to the aspiration of man. 

Man is now under a great need and pressure to 
establish a rational theory of the moral order of the 
Universe. The old theologies and the modern mate- 
rialistic philosophies are repugnant to the higher 
ethical ideals of the present time. Man demands 
something better, and his need will produce it. If 
that higher faith should be found, as I believe it will 
be found, in the theory of the complete immortality 
of the soul of the individual, then man's need and 
aspiration to know something of his past, and in his 
future life to meet and remember the friends of the 
present life, will bring forth a harvest, and it will be 
possible for him to remember, know, and understand. 

We get nothing that we do not earn. We have 
laid small foundation in effort or aspiration for a 
knowledge of our past lives, for our race has continu- 
ously denied the possibility of preexistence. It is 
not strange, under the circumstances, that only a 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 255 

faint glimmer of light comes to us from the black- 
ness of the past. Complete conscious immortality 
is, I believe, a thing which must be earned. It exists 
now in a rudimentary sense in many, perhaps in all. 
It can be developed, as all other things are developed, 
under the pressure of needs and aspirations. 



VI 

THE DIFFICULTIES IN ACCEPTING AND EX- 
PRESSING THE LOGIC OF FATALISM 

IN defense of Fatalism : 
u From my point of view Fatalism is not a doctrine 
of despair and in nowise need detract from the dignity of 
mankind, because, while Fatalism takes from man the 
credit of his being the author of his good conduct, it leaves 
him the consolation which may be derived from his con- 
sciousness of being used as the exponent of righteousness. " 

But where do we find consolation for him who is 
created unrighteous — for the hypocrite, liar, thief, 
murderer ? He, it would appear, has the consolation 
only of being used as an exponent of viciousness. 

" ' Fatalism kills every aspiration of man.' Perhaps it 
ought to do so, but does it in fact ? I know men who 
accept Fatalism, yet who are among the most aspiring, 
energetic, and inspiring men I know." 

Fatalism would kill aspiration if any one could 
actually believe in Fatalism. Fortunately no one 
accepts Fatalism completely, though many have done 
so intellectually. The extreme Fatalists are cour- 
ageous thinkers who see that the theory of Creation- 
ism leads to no other conclusion than Fatalism, and 
who are too sincere to decline that finality, though 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 257 

it be a hard doctrine to live up, to. I have known 
intimately only two men who accepted the logic of 
Fatalism ; but there was something in each of them 
that would not be bound by this verdict of the mind. 
One, a man of great genius and noble character, who 
is now dead, has left behind him many volumes of 
striking and original thought, in almost every page 
of which will be found eulogy and criticism, praise 
and blame, or some other form of recognition of man 
as a free moral agent. 

The other is a writer of fiction, who told me some 
time ago of an effort made by him to express the 
meaning of Fatalism, and of his failure. He has 
obliged me with this account of his experience : 

" It was my intention to write a story which should be 
projected into that future time when all men shall have 
penetrated the shallow trickery of the will, and shall have 
come to see the utter mechanicalism of life. The leading 
characters were to have been a man and a woman who 
knew themselves to be the idiots of that gloomily enlight- 
ened day, reversions to a previous type, capable of many 
emotions long outworn in the generality of the species. I 
wished them to wander away together into the cities of 
a dead age of splendor, and amid the discarded luxuries 
of mankind, where their natural reversionary tendencies 
would be encouraged so that they should come under the 
sway of hope, love, and many kindred dreams, being led 
at last to the absurdity of a recognized voluntary attempt 
to be the first parents of a new and happier race. The 
idea took strong hold of me — but that idea I shall never 



258 ETERNALISM 

be able to express, because there is no language known to 
me which could be the vehicle of such a theme. A series 
of experiments with the introductory chapters of the story- 
convinced me that the error of Free-will is inextricably 
woven into human speech. I believe it to be strictly im- 
possible to portray such characters as I imagined — people 
absolutely free from the volition al idea, to whom i willing ' 
had ceased to be an illusion — unless the writer shall in- 
vent a new language or modify that which we now use to 
such an extent that nobody else will be able to understand 
it. A mere glance at the auxiliary verbs will show the 
difficulty of the problem. 

" Mark, also, the term, i absolutely free/ which I in- 
advertently used above to describe men living open-eyed 
in the realm of Necessity." 

Not only is there no language in which Fatalism 
can be expressed, but it is also true that no one can 
regulate his actions, feelings, and thoughts in har- 
mony continuously with that doctrine. No one can 
sympathize with the cruel, treacherous, and malicious 
of his own kind, as he should sympathize with them 
if they were created vicious without their own knowl- 
edge or consent — being only the innocent victims of 
the malice of Nature, or of the wrath of the Creator. 
Nor can any one look upon an honest man as being 
entitled to no more approbation than a rascal. 

He only who can look constantly upon the mean 
and depraved with sympathy, and upon the good and 
noble without respect, can accept fully the doctrine 
of Fatalism, and the denial of human freedom. 



VII 

THE DECAY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY — THE 
TRUE AND IMPERISHABLE PHILOSOPHY 

CONCERNING the philosophers: 

" Your dealing with the philosophers is, to say the 
least, one-sided. You say that they have not yet decided 
what morality is, yet if you will follow the history of 
moral theory through another line of thinkers you will 
probably find reason to modify this statement. Beginning 
with Socrates there is a succession of writers down to the 
present time who have taught that morality belongs to the 
nature of man (in opposition to some that you quote) 
and that it has its foundation in the distinction of right 
and wrong. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the early Chris- 
tian writers, the leading thinkers of mediaeval Christianity, 
Grotius, Berkeley, Reid, Kant, Hegel, Butler, Hutcheson, 
Price, and a multitude of more recent writers, ending, 
say, with Martineau, have given a very distinct and con- 
sistent utterance on this point." 

My critic has misunderstood me. I have said that 
the inhabitant of a distant planet could not " deter- 
mine through any agreement among our philosophers 
what the morality of this world really is." I am 
aware that all philosophers have not been Hedonists. 

My issue with the philosophers is with the expo- 



260 ETERNALISM 

nents of Creationism only, and extends so far only 
as they deal with the great problems of morals and 
of man's accountability and freedom — all other 
philosophical questions being relatively unimportant. 
The philosophers of Creationism build upon the 
theory that the character of the individual is made 
for him — not by him — an error which is so bedded 
in the foundations and interwoven with all of the 
developments of Western philosophy that the whole 
structure has finally tumbled of its own rottenness, 
and is no longer of much interest save to the pedant 
and the antiquarian. 

Socrates and Plato, who are referred to by my 
critic, were not philosophers of Creationism. They 
built upon the theory that the soul of the individual 
is preexistent and after-existent. 

" Your sweeping denunciation of the philosophers is not 
justified in view of the fact, as you admit, that many of 
them are not Necessitarians. Nor do I think that the 
poets, however worthy in their own line, should be exalted 
at the expense of the great philosophical thinkers." 

The philosophers of Creationism are divided into 
two schools. One school accepts the logic of Crea- 
tionism completely in the denial of man's freedom 
and accountability, and in the affirmation of Fatal- 
ism. The other school balks at this monstrous 
determination, abandons its logic, and invents the 
conclusion that man is free. 

Both schools have discredited reasoning — the one 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 261 

in accepting a conclusion so unreasonable, immoral, 
and unbelievable that no man, as I have shown, has 
been able to act or think or live as if it were true ; 
and the other in forcing a conclusion in violation of 
the simplest and plainest principles of logic. 

Reasoning is faulty when the conclusion is unbe- 
lievable. Our philosophers were learned men. They 
knew that their major premise — that the character 
of the individual is made for him — is only a theory, 
an assumption, and that it is not the only possible 
theory or assumption concerning the riddle of human 
life. They might at least have made this admission : 
" The difficulties in which we flounder are due to our 
Western theory that the character of the individual 
is made for him. There is another theory, held in 
the other half of the world, and by the greatest of 
the old philosophers, that man, in his preexistent 
life, makes his own character. This other theory, it 
is true, does not lead to an immoral or fatalistic con- 
clusion, nor would it force us to twist, tangle, and 
pervert our own logic in order to avoid that conclu- 
sion ; but we do not consider the other theory as of 
any consequence. It has no standing in our part of 
the world ; it is contrary to our revealed Keligion, 
and to all of our philosophic thought, which is neces- 
sarily in harmony with our Theology. Still, we men- 
tion this other theory incidentally, and in fairness, 
for what it may be worth." 

It is true that our philosophy has its roots in our 



262 ETERNALISM 

Theology. Originally they were one. Both are built 
upon the fundamental error of Creationism. One is 
dead, and the other is undergoing transformation. 
Theology survives only because of its association, 
direct and indirect, with those moral truths of Reli- 
gion which the logic of our Western philosophy has 
always denied. 

It is true, as my critic says, and as I have just 
admitted, that many of our philosophers have de- 
clined to accept the immoral conclusions from the 
theory of Creationism. They did this, not as philos- 
ophers — for a philosopher cannot repudiate logic — 
but as men. They declined the conclusions of their 
fellow philosophers, and accepted instead the instinc- 
tive belief of all mankind in man's freedom and 
accountability. I say " all mankind " advisedly, for 
all men, including the most extreme philosophical 
Fatalists, do believe, and cannot avoid believing, 
instinctively in freedom and accountability. The 
Fatalists account for this instinctive belief on the 
ground that it is an " illusion." A strange theory, 
that our moral instincts are illusions, and that an 
immoral and unbelievable philosophy is real ! 

The thought of our poets is clearer and better than 
the thought of our philosophers, because the poets 
have drawn usually from the great fountains of truth 
known instinctively to men, in which are found no 
contradictions, no entanglements, no lessons of im- 
morality or of Fatalism. 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 263 

The greatest thoughts of the poets, and all other 
thoughts drawn from man's instinctive sense of the 
Eightness of Things, suffer not from age. They 
come down to us from the dim past, and we treasure 
them and pass them on to the future. If, through a 
catastrophe, any be lost of record, then some later 
thinker, whose soul is kindled by the same sacred 
fire, produces them anew. They constitute the im- 
mortal, the imperishable, philosophy of mankind — 
not the perverted philosophy of a narrow school, 
existent for a little time in one part of this world, 
but the philosophy, we may well believe, of the 
ages, of all intelligence, of all worlds, of all time. 
Through it we see clearly the perfection of the Eter- 
nal Order, and we draw the strength, the inspiration 
and hope which assure us that life is a blessing and 
not a curse. 



VIII 

AGNOSTICISM— THE EVIDENCES OF THE AFTER- 
LIFE, OF PRE-EXISTENCE, OF THE MORAL 
ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE 

A GNOSTICISM, doubt, and questionings: 

" I am inclined, as are many scientific men, to a 
belief in Agnosticism on the ground that a future existence 
is not demonstrable with rigor." 

" The Agnosticism of which I have any conception as- 
serts that it is ' not known/ not that it is unknowable or 
beyond the reach of reason." 

u My Agnosticism, while asserting nothing, leaves room 
for abundant faith in the ultimate goodness of tilings." 

" My form of Agnosticism is hardly a dogma ; it is 
simply a dropping of the subject until data can be acquired 
upon which to base reasoning." 

" All men are more or less Agnostic. All men should 
)>e Agnostic to the extent of being able to say when they 
do not know a certain thing, l I do not know.' M 

" When it comes to the harder task of constructing a 
working hypothesis to replace those you have so clearly 
proven untenable, I do not feel that I can follow you so 
Completely and unreservedly. There are still many points 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 265 

where I am compelled to say with the Agnostic, ' I do 
not know.' " 

11 The most thoughtful Agnostics say ' we do not know,' 
not ' it cannot be known/ which is mere arrogance." 

" You ignore the fact that the Agnostic has also 
I evolved.' He does not say to-day, ' No one can know,' 
but ' No one does know up to date.' He does not limit 
future knowledge. Numbers of things that ten years ago 
were classed as ' unknowable ' are known to-day." 

The foregoing quotations are introduced to show 
that those who call themselves Agnostics usually 
mean thereby to express doubt, to dispute evidence, 
or to affirm their individual lack of knowledge. It 
is an error, however, to use Agnosticism as a word 
to express doubt, disbelief, or ignorance. If it can 
be so used correctly, then all men are Agnostics, 
for all, including the most intelligent, are doubtful, 
disbelieving, or ignorant in relation to many things. 

"Your contention against Agnosticism is, in words, a 
contention that we can know that man is immortal, while 
in reality, I should say, it is a contention that there is 
reasonable ground to believe it." 

If it be admitted that " there is reasonable ground 
to believe it," or the slightest ground to believe it, 
then the Agnostic position is turned, for the essence 
of the Agnostic belief is this : No one can know any- 
thing about it. 

Agnosticism is not the attitude of an individual ; 



266 ETERNALISM 

it is not even a school of thought. It is a dogma 
defining the limits of thought. Logically it derides 
all discussion and investigation of a future life, for 
he who discusses or investigates admits that the 
theory of survival has some rational standing. This 
a real Agnostic cannot admit. 

Let us now consider the actual Agnostic position : 

" I do not affirm or deny the possibility of future recom- 
penses or the reverse, yet it appears to me that there can 
be no proof or knowledge here. The subject permits of 
no investigation." 

" The subject permits of no investigation " is the 
creed of real Agnosticism. 

" You raise a number of deep questions, many of which 
transcend the natural world and consequently are outside 
the pale of science." 

Again we have the limited conception of the 
cosmic order — the assumption that questions can be 
so deep or subtle or remote that they " transcend the 
natural world, and consequently are outside the pale 
of science." Here is a theory that there is a natural 
world, with something beyond which is not of Na- 
ture, that the cosmos does not include all, that there 
are phenomena which science cannot consider. It is 
akin to the error into which Buckle falls when he as- 
sumes that ww man modifies Nature, and Nature modi- 
lies man," as though man were not a part of Nature. 

The thought of man cannot reach beyond the 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 267 

natural, because man is of Nature, and his thought is 
also of Nature. He may, and usually does, misun- 
derstand Nature, hold limited and imperfect views ; 
but these also are natural, not unnatural or super- 
natural. No man has unlimited intelligence or 
reasoning powers ; hence he is subject to error, 
which is as natural in his case as accuracy. The 
supernatural theory is not a thing apart from Na- 
ture ; it is a misconception of the order of Nature. 
It is not a theory to be ignored on the ground that 
it is outside of Nature, and consequently beyond the 
domain of science. It can be answered only by show- 
ing that it is untrue, that it is an incorrect interpre- 
tation of Nature. 

It is true that we use the word "unnatural," 
meaning thereby the exceptional, the abnormal, or 
the untrue ; but the exceptional, the abnormal, and 
the untrue do not "transcend the natural world." 
Progressive science is engaged wholly in exploring 
the unknown and in answering the untrue. 

The religious beliefs of man are as legitimate 
matters for scientific investigation as his stomach, 
muscles, or brain. Some of the most eminent of 
modern thinkers have devoted much time and 
thought to the study and comparison of these be- 
liefs, seeking for their common meaning and rational 
interpretation. No one can deny that Religion is 
natural, for, as the Bishop of Ripon says, " man has 
been incorrigibly religious." 



268 ETERNALISM 

" We are limited in all our discussions so soon as we 
forsake Theology to ' pure ' experience — that is, to the 
evidence of history and civilization as we are able to un- 
derstand the facts — and we only evade our problems when 
we bring in references to other spheres. Every question 
that is capable of clear statement must be solved from 
within human experience or else it is incapable of solution." 

" Psychical research claims to have rendered some evi- 
dence as to an hereafter, conscious, personal, communica- 
tive. Its evidence is not, however, conclusive upon that 
matter ; but, so far as I am aware, there is not a single 
whit of evidence, even of this character, as to 'preexistence.' 

" The case seems somewhat similar in one respect to the 
biological problem as to the origin of life — namely, that 
it may have come to our earth from some other planet or 
some preexistent life. Such is not an impossibility, but 
wholly beyond possibility at present of demonstration. It 
may have originated de novo, from some fortunate clash 
of atoms in the processes of a cooling globe, but this again 
is wholly beyond demonstration. 

" It seems to me that while speculations upon these 
points are not without interest and some measure of profit 
as showing possibilities of a reconciliation of existing con- 
ditions, they are at best merely suggestive, and in nowise 
conclusive. " 

" If Justice is to be vindicated for man, it must be so 
vindicated without an appeal to the unknown possibilities 
of an inscrutable past or future.' ' 

" Your theory of man's relations to the Universe is cor- 
rect in so far as it maintains, mainly in opposition to the 
theory of Theology, that man is unreservedly part of a 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 269 

larger whole, but it explains the problems of Heredity, 
Necessity, Free-will, etc., only by evading them for this 
world and debiting the solution to another sphere. 

" The main fallacy of Eternalism is precisely that it 
takes us to such another world and makes the whole prob- 
lem, if not center there, then be solved there, and of this 
no man can say anything. The theory, it is true, cannot 
be refuted, but equally it carries conviction to none." 

I am unable to believe that any problem which 
man can comprehend even vaguely is beyond the 
reach of reason. The fact that man can comprehend 
the issue indicates that some light exists. Many 
problems are beyond my reason, but they cannot be 
beyond all reason. 

Of the problem of " another sphere," " another 
world," of life after death, my critics say, we know 
nothing, " no man can say anything." 

We know that the physical body of the individual 
dies and decomposes. So far, at least, we have 
knowledge. If this be all that we know, then we 
know that the individual does not survive death, that 
there is no life hereafter ; and this we should state 
as our conclusion. The admission that the individual 
may live after death is an evidence that there must 
be some reason to justify such an assumption. We 
do not say of a house consumed by fire that it may 
still exist. 

If we know nothing, and can know nothing, of a 
life hereafter, then there has been and can be no 



270 ETERNALISM 

evidence of such existence. Is it true that there is 
no such evidence ? 

Every form and manifestation of Religion, as 
Tylor has shown, is based upon what he calls Ani- 
mism— the belief in disembodied spirits, and that 
man has held, or can hold, communication with them. 
The witnesses of these communications have been 
numerous in all times, and among nearly all tribes 
and races of which we have accurate knowledge, 
including the peoples now in existence. Some of 
these witnesses are well known — Socrates and Swe- 
denborg, and in our own time Hyslop and James, 
Wallace and Crookes, and many others. It is im- 
possible to impeach all of these witnesses ; they are 
too numerous, and many thousands, perhaps millions, 
are dead. 

My Agnostic critics will doubtless say that they 
disbelieve this evidence. In saying this they shift 
their ground. They abandon the claim that there is 
no evidence, and admit instead that there is a great 
deal of evidence, all of which they dispute. But 
their denial, and all other denial of the evidence, 
does not answer it or remove it. It is difficult to 
conceive of a rational ground on which such a mass 
of evidence can be disputed, save on the assumption 
that the survival of the soul is a doctrine which is 
unbelievable — a lame conclusion in view of the fact 
that nearly all of mankind have believed it, and con- 
tinue to believe it. 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 271 

Nor can the instinctive belief of mankind in the 
survival of the soul be passed by as a fact of no 
importance. 

I have shown in a former place that the belief in 
the survival of the soul is the instinctive faith of 
man. That this belief in an after-life was not in 
the beginning a product of man's reason is an evi- 
dence of its truth, for it belongs in the category of 
vital truth and wisdom which is not taught, but 
which is instinctive, and does not mislead or deceive. 

He who denies the evidence of " another sphere," 
of life hereafter, must show either that man's belief 
in the survival of the soul is not instinctive, or that 
instinct is misleading and untrue. And he will have 
much difficulty in establishing either proposition. 

The evidence which is absolutely conclusive to 
my mind, however, of the after-existence, and also 
of the preexistence, of the soul is found in the fact 
that on no theory other than the complete immor- 
tality of the soul can we establish the freedom and 
the accountability of man, and the moral order of 
the Universe. Some of my Agnostic critics have 
dismissed this consideration as a matter beyond the 
reach of science. I am sure that they have passed 
judgment too hastily. Whether the Eternal Order 
be upon the whole right or wrong, just or unjust, 
is an issue of much importance, and possibly of more 
importance than all other questions pertaining to 
human life. To say that science cannot consider 



272 ETERNALISM 

this supreme question is an unwarranted impeach- 
ment of the capability of science. 

In answer to the critics who assume that no evi- 
dence of preexistence has been presented, or is 
obtainable, I will present a simple proposition. 
There are only two possible theories of the origin 
of the individual — one that his character has been 
made for him ; the other that his character is made 
by him. The former is the theory of Creationism ; 
the latter of Eternalism. Each of these theories 
includes certain inevitable consequences. The corol- 
lary of Creationism, as I have proved, is Fatalism. 

He who appeals to reason must not deny reason. 
He who accepts Creationism as true must accept 
Fatalism as true. He who says, " I deny preexist- 
ence," says at the same time, in fact, " I accept 
Fatalism." If he says, " I accept Creationism and 
deny Fatalism," he takes a position which is irra- 
tional and illogical. 

" And suppose that I do accept Fatalism. What 
then ? " Then you accept a position so irrational, 
unjust, and unbelievable, as I have shown, that it 
cannot be expressed in our language, or entertained 
without doing violence to the normal feelings and 
moral sentiments of mankind. 

It would be unreasonable to say that, of two pos- 
sible theories of the origin of the individual, there 
is no ground for rational preference between the one 
which leads to conclusions that are immoral and 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 273 

unbelievable, and the other which leads to conclu- 
sions that are moral and believable. 

As for the dogma of Agnosticism, upon what does 
it really rest ? Has it ever been demonstrated, or 
has any serious attempt been made to demonstrate 
it ? I know of none. It is a mere assertion, a de- 
nial. Science has nothing to do with assertions and 
denials. It weighs, considers, strikes a balance, 
proves or disproves. 

The assertion that " No one can know " — made 
as it is by a very few, in antagonism to the almost 
universal faith of mankind, and in the denial logic- 
ally of any rational ground for the belief in thfe 
moral order of the Universe — is apparently the 
most pretentious, imperious, and arrogant assertion 
of intellectual infallibility ever made by a school of 
men on this earth. Certainly we have no record of 
any others who, in contradiction to the mature judg- 
ment and moral instincts of the human race, have 
said this practically : " We know the limits of human 
knowledge. We set up our barrier here, and no 
thought shall ever penetrate beyond it ! " 



IX 

AN EXAMINATION OF THE ONE THEORY OF 
INFINITE JUSTICE OFFERED BY CREATION- 
ISM 

WHEN I invited criticism upon the original 
draft of the matter in this volume, I urged 
each of my reviewers to send to me his own theory 
of Infinite Justice, if it should differ from the theory 
of Eternalism. I conceived, correctly I think, that 
the theory of Eternalism could be answered more 
completely by a better theory than in any other way. 
The answers to this request are of much importance, 
for they point to the fact — which is evident indeed 
in the very nature of the issue, though it would 
doubtless otherwise have escaped my observation — 
that there are apparently only two theories of adjust- 
ment which can be built upon the assumption of 
Creationism, and that these two theories resolve them- 
selves promptly upon analysis into one. This one 
theory is old and well known. Indeed it is doubtful 
that there are any theories entirely new bearing on 
the relations of the individual to the Eternal Order. 
So much thought lias been expended on the subject 
that one can only hope at the best to find some new 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 275 

harmony or overlooked inconsistency in the reasoning 
that has come down to us, or to discover in the later 
facts of science some new light upon the old philoso- 
phies and beliefs. 

The minor theory, which, as I shall show, is really 
included in the main theory, is as follows : 

"Man is justly responsible for all he is, because 
God has given him Free-ivill." 

" When you say that ' the theological theory that man 
has been created by God is also the doctrine of Fatalism,' 
I must dissent, for whatever the Scriptures may say in 
regard to ' the final disposal of man/ they must always 
be interpreted in the light of the doctrine or fact or con- 
sciousness — call it what you will — that men possess 
Free-will in spiritual things. Consequently the responsi- 
bility rests not with the Creator, as you claim, but with 
the one who has Free-will." 

" There are difficulties, indeed, but, after all, there are 
less, it seems to me, in the Biblical statement that God 
made all men upright, but that men have sought many 
inventions. The responsibility of the present state of 
things does not rest upon God, but upon man as a free 
agent." 

" If human souls are created, the responsibility for their 
congenital defects may be charged up to their Creator. 
But are they not responsible for willfully doing what they 
know to be wrong ? If not, then I do not see that we 
can have an ethic at all in the ordinary sense." 

" With free volition as his indisputable attribute, man's 



276 ETERNALISM 

moral responsibility, unless rendered unaccountable by 
conditions over which he has no control, is inseparable 
from his ruling position in this creation and far beyond. 
If, like the tiger, man is carnivorous or ferocious, it is his 
heritage from a degraded stock to be redeemed by a nobler 
humanity to come. Man is what the impressions of edu- 
cation and environment make of him. The angel and 
the devil, hell and heaven, happiness and misery, are all 
rooted in the human heart, provided it has been allowed 
to throb freely in accord with its natural inclinations. 
With the loss of freedom responsibility ceases. Bad 
parents have not infrequently a good child, and vice versa. 
It all depends on influences. All other things being 
equal, self-elevation from a lower to a higher state is the 
test well worthy of a general theory. The moment it is 
proved that it lies in my power to be better than I am, 
that moment my Creator ceases to be amenable for my 
being bad. The cat is felonious by instinct ; man by his 
free-will. Herein your theory of human accountability 
must remain unchallenged." 

" Sin in the sight of God is the knowing violation of 
Divine Law. A man sins when he knows the law, and 
in liberty rejects the right and chooses the evil. ' Then 
ye did not know, and ye were without sin.' ' 

" Nor do I think that * Creationism ' necessarily involves 
quite such a severe indictment of the Creator. Might not 
lie conceivably turn a soul loose in the world, and that 
soul's subsequent downfall be due to the evil choice it 
makes, it possessing Free-will ? Wherein is God then so 
fearfully responsible ? " 

Assuming that freedom is given to men by the 






ANSWERS TO CRITICS 277 

Creator, has the allotment been equal, fair, and 
just ? 

There are no scores to be settled between the 
uncreated souls and the Creator. The uncreated 
have done no evil, no good, nothing to earn condem- 
nation or favor. It would be unfair for him to give 
to one more of Free-will than to another, knowing 
that the salvation or damnation of each soul would 
follow upon this endowment. 

Freedom is dependent largely upon intelligence. 
We cannot say that the Australian savages, who can 
count no more than the fingers of one hand, are as 
free as the individuals of the higher races, nor that 
the dull of any race are as free as the enlightened. 
Nor is it true that one created a Turk is as free 
to embrace Christianity as one who is created an 
American. 

Can Free-will be so bestowed that the individual 
who is endowed with evil passions is as free to lead 
a good life as the one who is endowed with virtues ? 
This question must be answered in the negative. The 
soul created vicious is not as free to be good as is 
the soul that is created virtuous ; and the soul cre- 
ated ignorant is not as free to be wise as is the soul 
that is created intelligent. 

It is plain that Free-will, if it be the gift of the 
Creator, is unfairly and unjustly distributed — that 
there are discriminations in favor of some souls and 
against others. And it appears to be quite impossi- 



278 ETERNALISM 

ble to build a theory of Justice upon an original 
injustice in the order of Creation. Since, however, 
this theory treats freedom as an endowment of souls, 
it should be included in the main theory of Eternal 
Justice, offered by the believers in Creationism, 
which is as follows: 

"God judges men according to their endowments, 
their original natures and characters, their oppor- 
tunities and difficulties — he 6 asks not the same of 
one as of another,' but judges eachsotd separately." 

" You ask ' how can men be held to equal moral account- 
ability if they have not been endowed in the beginning 
with equal goodness, equal strength/ etc. 

" Who supposes they will be held to equal moral account- 
ability ? Human tribunals may so hold, but then all human 
tribunals are imperfect. Perhaps it may be necessary for 
those who are imperfect judges, who cannot know of the 
original endowment, its strength or its weakness, to judge 
by one standard for all rather than attempt the impos- 
sible, — i. £., of judging by a standard different for each 
individual when, confessedly, ignorant of all the circum- 
stances in the case of any. It seems to me you attempt 
to apply the provisional and imperfect methods of men 
as if they were the ways of the omniscient God." 

11 The same obligation is not exacted of all. The divine 
being who can see the heart judges justly and asks not the 
same of one as of the other." 

"Again, the adverse conditions under which so many 
are bom do not to me argue 'the curse of the Creator' 
when the Creator is interpreted to be not a mere wheel 01 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 279 

1 Justice,' but the ' everlasting love ' which will forever 
deal in mercy and judge according to one's light." 

11 My faith is that the Creator does assume responsibility 
for all who are born unfit and unfortunate. In other 
words, no human being enters this Universe who will not 
here or in some after life have the fairest chance that even 
the Eternal Heart can give him." 

" No man is condemned for his heredity. This whole 
question, which seems to trouble many, in regard to he- 
redity, being born in the slums, having no chance, etc., is 
simple, so simple that there ought not to be any confusion. 
A child that is born in evil surroundings and never knew 
the right is, in the Lord's sight, always a child. A man 
is not judged by his parents, nor his birth, nor his chances. 
The question is not how much do you know, but how 
faithfully have you lived up to what you do know. The 
question is not how great were your chances, but how well 
have you used what you have. The question is not how 
great things have you done, but with what motive have you 
worked. A man can shovel dirt with as godly a motive 
as a clergyman will preach a sermon." 

" No man that has had no chance is condemned. ( Herein 
is the condemnation that light has come into the world and 
men love darkness rather than light because their deeds 
are evil.' That is, a man is condemned only when light 
has come into his mind and he has deliberately turned from 
the light and chosen evil because he loved evil rather than 
good. Such a one can but receive the penalty inherent 
in violated order." 

"It is an unwarranted assumption that all men are 
equally accountable. The man with two talents was 



280 ETERNALISM 

required to gain simply the spiritual duplicates. Sinners 
differ in degrees of vice as well as saints in degrees of 
virtue. ' One star differs from another in glory.' Man is 
accountable for his possibilities, not another's." 

The assumption that the Creator will set things 
right in the end includes necessarily the other 
assumption that they were wrong in the beginning. 
If things had been right in the beginning, there 
would be nothing for God to make right in the end. 
And who, or what, is responsible for the beginning 
of all souls, under the theory which we are consider- 
ing ? The Creator. Here we meet again the un- 
answerable logic of the ages, which holds the Maker 
responsible for the thing made, the Creator for the 
soul created. 

How will the Creator, who has made things wrong, 
set them right ? Will he reward the good ? Why 
should the good be rewarded ? They did not make 
themselves good; they were made good by their 
Creator. Will he punish the evil ? They were made 
evil by himself. Will he, then, forgive the vicious ? 
But why should he forgive those whom he has made 
vicious? It is a strange doctrine that the souls 
created vicious should ask forgiveness of their Crea- 
tor. Rather should the Creator pray for forgiveness 
from his victims upon whom lie has inflicted a wrong 
and outrage greater than all the wrongs that men 
can put on one another. 

The Kamschatkana hold that the rich and the poor 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 281 

will change places in the other world — that the 
Creator will be generous hereafter to those to whom 
he has been ungenerous here, that he will adjust the 
inequalities of this life through contrary inequalities 
in the next — a theory creditable to the Kamschat- 
kans, since it shows a good comprehension of Justice. 
The same theory of adjustment is expressed by the 
Wolofs in this proverb : " The more powerful one 
is in this world, the more servile he will be in the 
next." 

Will the Creator, then, give the higher place in 
heaven to the evil, to whom he has been unkind in 
this life, and the lower place to the good, to whom 
he has been generous here? Strict Justice would 
require that the handicaps in the race of this life — 
in which, if the Creative theory be true, some indi- 
viduals have been degraded and others glorified by 
the Creator — should be reversed in the next. And 
yet this theory has its difficulties — for the most 
debased among us would be surest of salvation, and 
the noblest in danger of hell. 

If the Creator should finally judge each soul in 
proportion to its endowment of Free-will, then the 
dullest, who receive the smallest allotment of free- 
dom, would be the safest, having little accountability, 
while the wisest, having the larger allotment, would 
be the most insecure. 

Fortunate, if this line of adjustment be followed, 
is he who has been created dull and vicious, for the 



282 ETERNALISM 

Creator is his debtor ; and unfortunate is lie who is 
created wise and good, for he is heavily in debt to 
his Maker. 

Man, at the most, under the one theory of Divine 
Justice offered by the Creationists, is accountable 
for the use of his endowments. If his endowments 
are vicious, he cannot be expected to make a good 
use of them. One cannot reap with a hammer, or 
plow with a broom, and neither can one endowed 
with an evil character be good. As we would expect 
the one endowed with goodness to be good, so we 
should expect the one endowed with viciousness to 
be bad. And if we expect the creature in whom 
good preponderates to grow in goodness, so we should 
expect the creature in whom evil preponderates to 
grow in evil. 

The theory destroys the distinctions between good 
and evil, by making God responsible for evil. We 
cannot assume that God creates a murderer without 
knowing that the murderer will kill. If the Creator 
dislikes murder, why does he create murderers ? If 
he detests wrong, why does he make liars, thieves, 
wantons, sots, ingrates ? If I should hypnotize some 
one, and put a murderous spirit in him, and he 
should consequently commit murder, who would be 
the real murderer, he or I? There is no doubt that 
I would be the actual criminal. How, then, can we 
acquit the Creator of the crimes committed by those 
whom lie lias made criminals? The theory which 



ANSWERS TO CRITICS 283 

we are considering is immoral. It enables men to 
acquit themselves, and to assume that God is the 
author of, or at least a partner in, their sins. 

The theory is a terrible arraignment of God. It 
assumes that he will excuse men for their evil 
endowments because he is the author of their endow- 
ments — that he will pardon the dull because he 
made them dull, the weak because he made them 
weak, the bad because he made them bad, the 
tempted because he put temptation in their way. 
That God tempts man is recognized in the Lord's 
Prayer — "Lead us not into temptation." The 
theory represents God also as an incapable who, with 
all power, all knowledge, all light, is yet unable to 
devise a divine order which is right and just funda- 
mentally. 

The theory that God must set things right is a 
noble conception, but when it is interwoven logically 
and inextricably — as it must be whenever it is based 
upon the dogma of Creationism — with the companion 
theory that God is responsible for all that is wrong, 
it cannot be designated as a theory of Divine Justice. 
It is really a theory of Divine Injustice. 

And is this all ? Does Creationism offer no other 
theory of Infinite Justice ? It is all ; Creationism 
offers no other theory. In the nature of things it 
can offer no other. The one theory is offered by 
Theology. On the other hand, Materialism, being 



284 ETERNALISM 

based also on Creationism, can offer no theory of 
Infinite Justice, and for this reason : Creationism is 
grounded upon the assumption that the character of 
the individual is made for him, either by the act of 
God, or by the processes of Nature, and that some 
individuals are created good without their knowl- 
edge, and that others are created bad without their 
consent. Upon this fundamental injustice no genu- 
ine theory of Justice, finite or infinite, natural or 
supernatural, can be constructed. 



APPENDIX 



i 



APPENDIX 

POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND OTHER THINK- 
ERS ON ETERNALISM 

MANY poets, philosophers, and other thinkers, 
ancient and modern, have expressed views 
more or less in harmony with the principles of Eter- 
nalism. Some of these thoughts are here reproduced 
in classified form, each of the fundamental proposi- 
tions of Eternalism being followed by the views 
which are in accord with it : 

FIRST PROPOSITION 

The Universe has in space no boundary ; in 
time no beginning and no end. 

From the Chhandogya-upanishad, in Sanscrit 
(600 b. c.) : 

The existent alone, my son, was here in the beginning, 
one only without a second. Others say, there was the 
non-existent alone here in the beginning, one only, without 
a second — and from the non-existent the existent was 
born. But how could this be, my son ? How could the 
existent be born from the non-existent? No, my son, 
only the existent was here in the beginning, one only, 
without a second. 



288 APPENDIX 

Francis Bacon : 

So great a difficulty hath it been thought to conceive 
matter produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated 
of ancient philosophers, even those who maintain the be- 
ing of a God, have thought matter to be uncreated and 
coeternal with Him. 

Robert G. Ingersoll : 

There was no beginning, and there can be no end. 

Huxley: 

But science knows nothing of any stage in which the 
Universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and 
popular sense, to be formless or empty, or in any respect 
less the seat of law and order than it is now. 

Herbert Spencer : 

That which persists unchanging in quantity, but ever 
changing in form, under these sensible appearances which 
the Universe presents to us, transcends human knowledge 
and conception — is an unknown and unknowable power, 
which we are obliged to recognize as without limit in 
space and without beginning or end in time. 

Haeckel : 

The Universe, or the cosmos, is eternal, infinite, and 
illimitable. 

Sir William Hamilton : 

Either existence is created by an existent God, on which 
alternative the definition is stultified by self-contradiction ; 
or existence is created by a non-existent God, an alterna- 
tive, if deliberately held, at once absurd and impious. 



APPENDIX 289 

Voltaire : 

Aristotle expressly maintains, in his book on Heaven, 
chapter xi., that the world is eternal ; this was the opinion 
of all antiquity, excepting the Epicureans. 

Heraklitus of Ephesus : 

The Universe, that is the All, is made neither of gods 
nor of men, but ever has been and ever will be an eternal 
living Fire, kindling and extinguishing in destined meas- 
ure, a game which Zeus plays with himself. 

Buchner : 

The Universe or matter with its properties, conditions, 
or movements, which we name forces, must have existed 
from and will exist to all eternity, or — in other words — 
the Universe cannot have been created. 

Du Prel : 

The Universe as a totality is without cause, without 
origin, without end. 

Grove : 

All our experiments yield us not the slightest trace of a 
limit ; each increased power of the telescope only opens 
to our gaze new realms of stars and nebulae, which, if not 
consisting of galaxies of stars, are self-illumining matter. 

To suppose the stellar Universe to be bounded by infi- 
nite space or by infinite chaos, that is to say, to suppose 
a spot — for it would then become so — of matter in defi- 
nite forms, with definite forces, and probably teeming 
with definite organic beings, plunged in a Universe of 
nothing, is, to my mind at least, far more unphilosophical 
than to suppose a boundless Universe of matter existing in 
forms and actions more or less analogous to those which, 
as far as our examination goes, pervade space. 



290 APPENDIX 

W. Meyer : 

With each sharpening of our tools which bear our gaze 
into the waves of light of the furthest starry realms, new 
waves of suns break forth from the limitless ocean of the 
stars. 

G. J. Klein : 

Even with the most powerful telescopes we see so many 
faintly shining stars that we are unable to doubt that on 
the further side of these there are yet others which will 
become visible by larger instruments. 

Secchi : 

From all these experiments, we conclude that the depth 
of celestial space cannot be sounded, and that we shall 
never succeed in reaching its bounds. We should vainly 
strive by a cumulation of resemblances to give even an 
approximate idea of the immeasurableness of the starry 
Universe. 

Pascal : 

The Universe is a circle whose center is everywhere and 
whose circumference is nowhere. 

Ruckert : 

The world has neither beginning nor end, in space nor 
in time. Everywhere is center, and turning-point, and in 
a moment is eternity. 

D'Holbach : 

Almost all the ancient philosophers are agreed in re- 
garding the Universe as eternal. Ocellus Lukanus says 
expressly, in speaking of the Universe, that " it has always 
been and ever will be." All unprejudiced persons will feel 
the force of the axiom " out of nothing nothing colne8. ,, 



APPENDIX 291 

Creation, in the acceptation in which the word is used by 
the moderns, is a theological subtlety. 

Empedocles : 

None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any 
man ; it has always been. 

SECOND PROPOSITION 

There is no creation and no annihilation — the 
essential properties of all things being uncreatable 
and indestructible. Birth and death, growth and 
decay, are transformations. 

Francis Bacon : 

It is impossible for any body to be utterly annihilated. 

Herbert Spencer: 

Hence it is impossible to think of something becoming 
nothing, for the same reason that it is impossible to think 
of nothing becoming something — the reason, namely, that 
nothing cannot become an object of consciousness. The 
annihilation of matter is unthinkable for the same reason 
that the creation of matter is unthinkable. 

Carl Vogt : 

Matter is uncreatable as it is indestructible. 

Spiller : 

If matter is indestructible, then it is also uncreated. 

F. Mohr : 

It is an indubitable fact, proved by a thousand chemical 
experiments, that no ponderable bodies or elements can 
perish or disappear, and equally that no new ones can 
originate. The property that cannot perish in time can- 



292 APPENDIX 

not be evolved in time. That which cannot be destroyed 
cannot be originated. It follows that matter has existed 
from eternity, that it was neither created nor evolved, that 
its totality which is infinitely great can be neither increased 
nor diminished, and this also on the ground that the infi- 
nitely great cannot be increased by the addition of the 
finite, and that its characteristic of indestructibility in- 
cludes that of non-creation. 

Haeckel : 

No particle of living energy is ever extinguished ; no 
particle is ever created anew. 

C. Maxwell : 

Although in the course of ages catastrophes have taken 
place in the heavens, and still take place, although ancient 
systems dissolve and new systems are built up out of their 
ruins, yet the molecules of which these systems consist, the 
foundations of the material universe, remain unbroken and 
uninjured. 

Robert G. Ingersoll : 

Nature is but an endless chain of efficient causes. She 
cannot create, but she eternally transforms. 

Buchner : 

The same atom which to-day helps to form the haughty 
mien of a sovereign or a hero, may perchance lie to-morrow 
as the street-dust beneath his feet. The same atom which 
to-day drones in the brain of a sheep, may perchance to- 
morrow aid the thinking of a philosopher or of a poet. 
The same atom which to-day forms part of dirt or manure, 
may perchance to-morrow sleep with its fellows on the 
flower-bud as fragrant bloom. 



APPENDIX 293 

Ecclesiastes i. 9 : 

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be ; and 
that which is done is that which shall be done ; and there 
is no new thing under the sun. 

B. Stewart: 

A simple elemental atom is really an immortal being, 
and rejoices in the power of remaining unchanged and 
unmoved in its being under the mightiest attacks which 
may be leveled against it ; it is probably in a condition of 
ceaseless movement and change of form, but remains none 
the less evermore the same. 

Rossmaessler : 

Matter is eternal ; it changes only its forms. 

Sebastian Frank : 

Substance abides eternally. A thing falls into dust, but 
out of the dust is developed another. The earth, as Pliny 
says, is a phoenix and remains once for all. When it 
becomes old it burns itself to ashes that out of them a 
young phoenix may arise, the former but rejuvenated. 

Bernard Telesius : 

Bodily matter is alike in all things and remains ever 
the same ; dark sluggish matter can neither be increased 
nor diminished. 

Giordano Bruno : 

That which was seed at first, becomes grass^ hence the 
ear, then bread, nutritive juice, blood, animal seed, embryo, 
man, corpse, then again earth, stone, or other mineral, and 
so forth. Herein we recognize therefore a thing which 
changes into all these things and essentially remains ever 
one and the same. . . . Where we say there is death, 



294 APPENDIX 

there is only the outgoing towards new life, a loosing of 
one union which is the binding into a new. 

Empedocles : 

They are children or persons of narrow views who im- 
agine that anything originates which before was non-exist- 
ent, or that anything can wholly die or perish. 

Anaxagoras : 

Existence in space neither increases nor diminishes. 

Democritus : 

Out of nothing arises nothing ; nothing that is can be 
annihilated. All change is only the union and separation 
of particles. The varieties of all things depend on the 
varieties of the atoms in number, size, form, and arrange- 
ment. 

P. A. Secchi : 

In Nature nothing is lost, nor matter, nor force, nor 
mechanical work. 

Liebig : 

Out of nothing no energy can arise. 

DuPrel: 

Motion, heat, light, magnetism, electricity, chemical 
affinity pass one into the other ; they are only different 
modes of one and the same original energy, and each if 
not directly can yet indirectly be converted back again into 
the old form out of which it has been evoked. 

Tyndall : 

Everywhere is change, nowhere is annihilation. In the 
organic as well as in the physical world, in living as well 
as in dead bodies, there is everlasting motion. Absolute 



APPENDIX 295 

repose is found nowhere. All is changing, and from the 
mould of the dust new life arises unceasingly. 

Buchner : 

The eternity of motion and its necessary existence were 
laid down as axioms long ago by the most ancient Greek 
philosophers who lived prior to the Socratic age. Espe- 
cially did the atomists, Leukippus and Democritus and 
their famous disciples Epicurus and Lucretius, regard it 
as self-evident that the atoms, out of which proceed all 
existence, should be considered as having been in motion 
from all eternity. 

THIRD PROPOSITION 

The soul of the individual, which is the essence 
of the individual, is uncreatable and indestructible, 
preexistent and after-existent, immortal and eter- 
nal. 

Emerson : 

We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but 
we know that it is divine. I cannot tell if these wonder- 
ful qualities which house to-day in this mortal frame shall 
ever reassemble in equal activity in a similar frame, or 
whether they have before had a natural history like that 
of this body you see before you ; but this one thing I know, 
that these qualities did not now begin to exist, cannot be 
sick with my sickness, nor buried in any grave ; but that 
they circulate through the Universe ; before the world was, 
they were. Nothing can bar them out, or shut them in, 
they penetrate the ocean and land, space and time, form 
and essence, and hold the key to universal Nature. I draw 
from this faith courage and hope. All things are known 



296 APPENDIX 

to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communica- 
tion. Nothing can be greater than it. Let those fear 
and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm, 
and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, 
rich as love. 

Socrates : 

Our souls therefore, Simmias, existed before they were 
in a human form, separate from bodies, and possessed in- 
telligence. 

Bulwer : 

Eternity may be but an endless series of those migra- 
tions which men call deaths, abandonments of home after 
home, even to fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age 
after age the spirit may shift its tent, fated not to rest in 
the dull Elysium of the heathen, but carrying with it ever- 
more its two elements, activity and desire. 

J. E. Von Schubert : 

I seem often clearly to remember in my soul a present- 
ment which I have not seen with my present, but with 
some other eye. 

William Law : 

The essences of our souls can never cease to be because 
they never began to be, and nothing can live eternally but 
that which hath lived from eternity. 

Sir Thomas Browne : 

There is surely a piece of divinity in us — something 
that was before the elements and owes no homage unto the 
sun. 

Whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no 
end. 



APPENDIX 297 

Hume: 

The soul, if immortal, existed before our birth. 
What is incorruptible, must be ungenerable. 
Metempsychosis is the only system of immortality that 
philosophy can hearken to. 

Schlegel : 

Nature is nothing less than the ladder of resurrection 
which, step by step, leads upward — or rather is carried 
from the abyss of eternal death up to the apex of life. 

Michelet : 

That which has saved India and Egypt through so many 
misfortunes and preserved their fertility is neither the Nile 
nor the Ganges ; it is the respect for animal life by the 
mild and gentle heart of man. 

Pythagoras : 

The soul was not then imprisoned in a gross mortal 
body, as it is now : it was united to a luminous, heavenly, 
ethereal body, which served it as a vehicle to fly through 
the air, rise to the stars, and wander over all the regions 
of immensity. 

We are our own children. 

Soame Jenyns : 

The ancient doctrine of transmigration seems the most 
rational and most consistent with God's wisdom and good- 
ness ; as by it all the unequal dispensations of things so 
necessary in one life may be set right in another, and all 
creatures serve the highest and lowest, the most eligible 
and most burdensome offices of life by an equitable rota- 
tion ; by which means their rewards and punishments may 
not only be proportioned to their behavior, but also carry 



298 APPENDIX 

on the business of the Universe, and thus at the same time 
answer the purposes both of justice and utility. 

Herder : 

Do you not know great and rare men who cannot have 
become what they are at once, in a single human exist- 
ence ? who must have often existed before in order to 
have attained that purity of feeling, that instinctive im- 
pulse for all that is true, beautiful, and good, in short, that 
elevation and natural supremacy over all around them ? 

I am not ashamed of my half-brothers the brutes ; on 
the contrary, as far as they are concerned, I am a great 
advocate of metempsychosis. I believe, for a certainty, 
that they will ascend to a higher grade of being, and am 
unable to understand how any one can object to this hy- 
pothesis, which seems to have the analogy of the whole 
creation in its favor. 

Dr. Henry More : 

And as this hypothesis [preexistence] is rational in 
itself, so has it also gained the suffrage of all philosophers 
of all ages, of any note, that have held the soul of man 
incorporeal and immortal. 

Southey : 

The Bystem of progressive existence seems, of all others, 

the most benevolent; and all that we do understand is so 

and BO good, and all we do or do not, so perfectly and 

overwhelmingly wonderful, that the most benevolent sys- 

u the most probable. 

William Blake: 

In my brain arc .studios and chambers filled with books 
ol old which I wrote and painted in ages of 

6 inv mortal life. 



APPENDIX 299 

Kev. William R. Alger : 

In every event, it must be confessed that of all the 
thoughtful and refined forms of the belief in a future life 
none has had so extensive and prolonged a prevalence as 
this [preexistence]. It has the vote of the majority, hav- 
ing for ages on ages been held by half the human race 
with an intensity of conviction almost without a parallel. 
Indeed, the most striking fact about the doctrine of the 
repeated incarnations of the soul, its form and experience 
in each successive embodiment being determined by its 
merits and demerits in the preceding ones, is the constant 
reappearance of that faith in all parts of the world, and 
its permanent hold on certain great nations. 

It takes us out of the littleness of petty themes and self- 
ish affairs, and makes it easier for us to believe in the 
vastest hopes mankind have ever kuown. It causes the 
most magnificent conceptions of human destiny to seem 
simply proportional to the native magnitude and beauty of 
the powers of the mind which can conceive such things. 

Francis Bowen : 

The doctrine of metempsychosis may almost claim to be 
a natural or innate belief in the human mind, if we may 
judge from its wide diffusion among the nations of the 
earth and its prevalence throughout the historical ages. 

George MacDonald : 

We cannot yet have learned all that we are meant to 
learn through the body. How much of the teaching even 
of this world can the most diligent and most favored man 
have exhausted before he is called to leave it ? Is all that 
remains lost ? 



300 APPENDIX 

Bhagavad Gita : 

You cannot say of the soul, it shall be, or is about to 
be, or is to be hereafter. It is a thing without birth. 

William Knight : 

As the inheritance of an illustrious name and pedigree 
quickens the sense of duty in every noble nature, a belief 
in preexistence may enhance the glory of the present life 
and intensify the reverence with which the deathless prin- 
ciple is regarded. 

The ethical leverage of the doctrine is immense, its 
motive power is great. It reveals as magnificent a back- 
ground to the present life, with its contradictions and dis- 
asters, as the prospect of immortality opens up an illimit- 
able foreground lengthening out the horizon of hope. 

Isaac D'Israeli : 

If we except the belief of a future remuneration beyond 
this life for suffering virtue and retribution for successful 
crimes, there is no system so simple, and so little repug- 
nant to our understanding, as that of metempsychosis. 
The pains and pleasures of this life are by this system 
considered as the recompense or the punishment of our 
actions in another state. 

Ilartmann : 

The experiences gained in one life may not be remem- 
bered in their details in the next, but the impressions 
which they produce will remain. Again and again man 
prases through the wheel of transformation, changing his 
lower energies into higher ones, until matter attracts him 
no longer, and he becomes — what he is destined to be — 

joA 



APPENDIX 301 

James Freeman Clarke: 

It would be curious if we should find science and phi- 
losophy taking up again the old theory of metempsychosis, 
remodeling it to suit our present modes of religious and 
scientific thought, and launching it again on the wide ocean 
of human belief. But stranger things have happened in 
the history of human opinion. 

Lichtenberg; 

I cannot get rid of the thought that I died before I was 
born. 

Voltaire : 

Pherecides was the first among the Greeks who be- 
lieved that souls existed from all eternity, and not the 
first, as has been supposed, who said that the soul sur- 
vived the body. Ulysses, long before Pherecides, had seen 
the souls of heroes in the infernal regions ; but that souls 
were as old as the world was a system which had sprung 
up in the East, and was brought into the West by Phe- 
recides. 

Schopenhauer : 

The deep conviction of the indestructibleness of our 
nature through death, which every one carries at the bot- 
tom of his heart, depends altogether upon the conscious- 
ness of the original and eternal nature of our being. 

We find the doctrine of Metempsychosis, springing from 
the earliest and noblest ages of the human race, always 
spread abroad in the earth as the belief of the great ma- 
jority of mankind — nay, really as the teaching of all re- 
ligions, with the exception of that of the Jews and the two 
which have proceeded from it : in the most subtle form, 
however, and coming nearest to the truth in Buddhism. 



302 APPENDIX 



With reference to the universality of the belief in 
Metempsychosis, Obry says rightly in his excellent book, 
" Du Nirvana Indien," p. 13, " This old belief has been 
held all round the world, and was spread in the remote 
antiquity to such an extent that a learned English church- 
man has declared it to be fatherless, motherless, and with- 
out genealogy." Taught already in the " Vedas," as in 
all the sacred books of India, Metempsychosis is well 
known to be the kernel of Brahmanism and Buddhism. 
It accordingly prevails at the present day in the whole of 
non-Mohammedan Asia, thus among more than half the 
whole human race, as the firmest conviction, and with an 
incredibly strong practical influence. It was also the be- 
lief of the Egyptians, from whom it was received with 
enthusiasm by Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato. The 
Pythagoreans, however, specially retained it. That it 
was also taught in the mysteries of the Greeks undeni- 
ably follows from the ninth book of Plato's Laws. The 
" Edda " also, especially in the " Voluspa," teaches Me- 
tempsychosis. Not less was it the foundation of the reli- 
gion of the Druids. Even a Mohammedan sect in Hin- 
dustan, the Bohrahs, of which Colebrooke gives a full 
account in the " Asiatic Researches," believes in Metem- 
psychosis, and accordingly refrains from all animal food. 
Also among American Indians and negro tribes — nay, 
even among the natives of Australia, traces of this belief 
are found. 

Lessing : 

The very same way by which the race reaches its per- 
fection must every individual man — one sooner, another 
later — have traveled over. Have traveled over in one and 
ine life ? Can he have been in one and the selfsame 






APPENDIX 303 

life a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian ? Can he in 
the selfsame life have overtaken both ? 

Surely not that : but why should not every individual 
man have existed more than once upon this world ? 

Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the 
oldest? Because the human understanding, before the 
sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, 
lighted upon it at once ? 

Why may not even I have already performed those 
steps of my perfecting which bring to men only temporal 
punishments and rewards ? 

Why should I not come back as often as I am capable 
of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I 
bring away so much from one life that there is nothing to 
repay the trouble of coming back ? 

Is this a reason against it? Or because I forget that I 
have been here already ? Happy is it for me that I do 
forget. The recollection of my former condition would 
permit me to make only a bad use of the present. And 
that which even I must forget now, is that necessarily for- 
gotten forever ? 

Wordsworth, in " Intimations of Immortality : " 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting 
And cometh from afar. 

Tennyson, in " De Profundis : " 

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
Where all that was to be, in all that was, 
Whirled for a million eons through the vast 
Waste dawn of multitudinous eddying light — 
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
Through all this changing world of changeless law, 



304 APPENDIX 

And every phase of ever heightening life, 
And nine long months of antenatal gloom, 
Thou comest. 

Goethe, in " Faust : " 

The soul of man 
Is like the water — 
From heaven it cometh, 
To heaven it mounteth, 
And thence at once 
It must hack to earth, 
Forever changing. 

Shelley, in « The Cloud : " 

I am the daughter of earth and water 

And the nursling of the sky ; 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, hut I cannot die. 

Whittier, in " A Mystery : " 

A presence strange at once and known 

Walked with me as my guide ; 
The skirts of some forgotten life 

Trailed noiseless at my side. 

Bayard Taylor, in " The Metempsychosis of the 
Pine : " 

All outward vision yields to that within 

Whereof nor creed nor canon holds the key ; 

We only feel that we have ever been 
And evermore shall be. 

Longfellow, in u Rain in Summer : " 

Thus the seer, with vision clear, 
I forms appear and disappear 
In the perpetual round of strange 
Mysterious change 

From birth to death, from death to birth, 
From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, 
Till glimpses more sublime 



APPENDIX 305 

Of things unseen before 

Unto his wondering eyes reveal 

The Universe as an immeasurable wheel 

Turning for evermore 

In the rapid rushing river of time. 

Walt Whitman, in " Leaves of Grass : " 

I know I am deathless ; 

I know that this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's 

compass, 
And, whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten 

million years, 
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. 

As to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths. 
No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. 

Victor Hugo, in " To the Invisible One : " 

Before I came upon this earth 

I know I lived in gladness 
For ages as an angel ; birth 

Has caused my present sadness. 

Dryden, in the translation of Ovid's "Metamor- 
phoses : " 

Souls cannot die. They leave a former home, 
And in new bodies dwell and from them roam. 
Nothing can perish, all things change below, 
For spirits through all forms may come and go. 

T. B. Aldrich, in " The Metempsychosis : " 

I was a spirit on the mountain tops, 
A perfume in the valleys, a simoom 
On arid deserts, a nomadic wind 
Roaming the Universe, a tireless Voice. 
I was ere Romulus and Remus were ; 
I was ere Nineveh and Babylon ; 
I was, and am, and evermore shall be, 
Progressing, never reaching to the end. 



306 APPENDIX 

Robert Browning, in " Evelyn Hope : " 

Delayed it may be for more lives yet 

Through worlds I must traverse, not a few — 

Much is to learn and much to forget 
Ere the time be come for taking you. 

Coleridge, in " On a Homeward Journey : " 

Oft in the brain does that strange fancy roll 

Which makes the present (while the flash does last) 
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past, 
Mixed with such feelings as perplex the soul 
Self-questioned in her sleep : and some have said 
We lived, ere yet this robe of flesh we wore. 

Rudyard Kipling, in " The Neolithic Age : " 

In the neolithic age, savage warfare did I wage 

For food and fame and two-toed horses' pelt ; 
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red dawn of man, 

And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt. 

Then the silence closed upon me till they put new clothing on 
me — 
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail ; 
And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer. 

Lowell, in « The Twilight : " 

Sometimes a breath floats by me, 

An odor from Dreamland sent, 
Which makes the ghost seem nigh me 

Of a something that came and went, 
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not 

In what diviner sphere : 
Of mem'ries that come not and go not ; 

Like music once heard by an ear 
That cannot forget or reclaim it ; 
A lomething ho shy, it would shame it 

To make it a show ; 
A Hoincthin^ too vague, could I name it, 
For others to know : 



APPENDIX 307 

As though I had lived it and dreamed it, 
As though I had acted and schemed it 
Long ago. 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in " To an Astrologer : " 

Before the solar systems were conceived, 
When nothing was but the Unnamable, 
My spirit lived, an atom of the Cause. 
Through countless ages and in many forms 
It has existed ere it entered in 
This human frame to serve its little day 
Upon this earth. 

W. W. Story, in « Cleopatra : " 

That was a life to live for ! 

Not this weak human life, 
With its frivolous, bloodless passions, 

Its poor and petty strife ! 
Come to my arms, my hero ! 

The shadows of twilight grow, 
And the tiger's ancient fierceness 

In my veins begins to flow. 
Come not cringing to sue me ! 

Take me with triumph and power, 
As a warrior storms a fortress ! 

I will not shrink or cower. 
Come as you came in the desert, 

Ere we were women and men, 
When the tiger passions were in us, 

And love as you loved me then ! 

Paul H. Hayne, in " Preexistence : " 

One sails toward me on the bay, 
And what he comes to do and say 
I can foretell. A prescient lore 
Springs from some life outlived of yore. 

Edwin Arnold, in " Light of Asia : " 

Lo ! as hid seed shoots after rainless years, 
So good and evil, pains and pleasures, hates 



308 



APPENDIX 



And loves, and all dead deeds come forth again 
Bearing bright leaves or dark, sweet fruit or sour. 
Thus was I he and she Yasodhara ; 
And while the wheel of birth and death turns round 
That which hath been must be between us two. 

Young : 

Look nature through ; 't is revolution all, 

All change ; no death. Day follows night, and night 

The dying day ; stars rise and set, and set and rise. 

Earth takes the example. All to reflourish fades 

As in a wheel ; all sinks to reascend ; 

Emblems of man, who passes, not expires. 

Milman's translation of " Mahabharata : " 

Ne'er was the time when I was not, nor thou, nor yonder kings of 

earth ; 
Hereafter, ne'er shall be the time, when one of us shall cease to be. 
The soul within its mortal frame glides on through childhood, 

youth, and age ; 
Then in another form renewed, renews its course again. 
All indestructible is He that spread the living universe ; 
And who is he that shall destroy the work of the Indestructible ? 
Corruptible, these bodies are the wrap of the everlasting soul — 
The eternal unimaginable soul. Whence on to battle, Bharata ! 
For he that thinks to slay the soul, or he that thinks the soul is 

slain, 
Are fondly both alike deceived : it is not slain — it slayeth not ; 
It is not born — it doth not die ; past, present, future, knows it 

not; 
Ancient, eternal and unchanged, it dies not with the dying of the 

frame. 
Who knows it inc orrupti ble, and everlasting and unborn, 
A\ lut heeds lie whether he may slay, or fall himself in battle 

slain P 
As their <»!<! garment! men cast off, anon, new raiment to assume, 
80 oasts the soul its worn-out frame, and takes at once another 

form. 
The Weapon cannot pierce it through, nor waste it the consuming 






APPENDIX 309 

The liquid waters melt it not, nor dries it up the parching wind. 
Impenetrable and unburned ; impermeable and undried ; 
Perpetual, ever wandering, firm, indissoluble, permanent, 
Invisible, unspeakable. 



INDEX 



Accountability, moral, its relation to 
materialism and to heredity, 7, 11 ; 
to eternalism, 37 ; acknowledgment 
of, fundamental, 70, 71, 74, 76, 77 ; a 
scientific law, 87 ; Herbert Spencer's 
explanation of, 113 ; difficulties of, 
118, 119 ; a late product of evolution of 
conduct, says Spencer, 122; incom- 
patible with creationism, 220, 260; 
can be established only on theory of 
complete immortality, 271 ; opinions 
concerning, quoted and discussed, 
276-280. 

Active and Moral Powers, The, of Man, 
Stewart's quotations from, 95, 96, 
102. 

Acts xv. 18, quoted, 13. 

Adam's sin, man's relation to, 18. 

After-existence, 31 ; its place in, Bud- 
dhistic doctrine, 66 ; belief in sup- 
ported by metamorphosis in animal 
life, 183, 184 ; example of, in the but- 
terfly and caterpillar, 246 ; believed 
in by Socrates and Plato, 260. See 
also Immortality of the soul. 

Agnosticism, 3-5, 88 ; quotations con- 
cerning, 264-266 ; disregards evi- 
dence, 270-273. 

Alciphron, quotation from, 97. 

Aldrich, T. B., quotation from his 
The Metempsychosis, 305. 

Alger, Rev. William R., quoted, on 
preexistence, 299. 

Allah, 84. 

Allen, Grant, quoted, on religion, 62, 
63. 

Alviella, Eugene Goblet Comted'. See 
Goblet d' Alviella, Eugene, Comte. 

Analogy, Butler's, quotation from, 
98. 

Anaxagoras, quoted, on existence, 294. 

Animals, not soulless, 184 ; their possi- 
bilities of development, 203. See also 
Metamorphosis in animal life. 



Animism, 270. 

Annihilation, doctrine of, unscientific, 
25-28 ; fear of, 74, 75 ; relation to 
devolution, 241, 242 ; quotations con- 
cerning, 291-295. 

Anthropomorphism, 232. 

Aristippus, his conception of the chief 
end of life, 121,122. 

Aristotle, quoted, on justice, 79 ; refer- 
ence to his theory of creation, 218 ; 
as a teacher of morality, 259 ; main- 
tained that the world is eternal, 289. 

Arnold, Edwin, quotation from his 
Light of Asia, 307, 308. 

Arnold, Matthew, his definition of re- 
ligion, 52. 

Atomic theory, 185, 188, 242. 

Atonement, its relation to justice, 18 ; 
vicarious, 120. 

Augustine, St., 96. 

Averages, law of, 31, 171. 

Bacon, Lord, quoted, 103 ; on matter, 
288 ; on annihilation, 291. 

Bain, Alexander, his definition of re- 
ligion, 52 ; quoted, on free-will, 97 ; 
his explanation of the feeling of 
moral obligation, 113 ; quoted, on 
punishment, 114. 

Belief, vital in theology, 120. 

Belsham, "William, quoted, on neces- 
sity, 102. 

Benedikt, Professor, his studies of 
criminals, 137. 

Bentham, Jeremy, on morality, 121. 

Berkeley, Bishop, quoted, on free-will, 
97; difficulties of his position, 118, 
119 ; as a teacher of morals, 259. 

Bhagavad Gita, quotation from, on 
the soul, 300. 

Bible, its support of fatalism, 105. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 47, 228, 231. 

Bordier, Dr., his studies of criminals, 
137. 



312 



INDEX 



Bowen, Francis, quoted, on metempsy- 
chosis, 299. 

Brahma, 84. 

Brahma, Emerson's, quotation from, 
168. 

Brains of criminals, 137. 

Bramhall, his discussion with Hobbes, 
114. 

Brinton, D. G., quoted, 63, 71. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted, on the 
soul, 296. 

Browning, Robert, quotation from Eve- 
lyn Hope, 306. 

Bruno, Giordano, persecution against, 
166-168 ; quoted, on the endless 
transformations in nature, 293, 294. 

Buchner, Edward F., 96; quoted, on 
necessity, 103 ; on criminals, 137 ; on 
the universe, 289 ; on transformation 
of matter, 292 ; on eternal existence 
of matter, 295. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 96 ; quoted, on 
necessity, 100 ; difficulties of his po- 
sition, 118, 119 ; quoted, on man and 
nature, 266. 

Buddhism, 49; doctrine of Nirvana, 
and its relation to immortality, 60, 
238, 239. 

Bulwer Lytton, Sir Edward, quoted, on 
transmigration of the soul, 296. 

Burns, Robert, 47 ; quoted, on the hon- 
est man, 209, 210. 

Burroughs, John, quoted, on the prob- 
lem of life, 142. 

Butler, Bishop, quoted, on necessity, 
98 ; difficulties of his position, 118, 
119 ; as a moralist, 259. 

Butterfly, its relation to the caterpillar, 
181-183, 245, 246. 

Cresar, Julius, 47. 

Caird, Edward, his definition of reli- 
gion, 53 ; quotation from his Evolu- 
tion of Jliligian, 61. 

Calvin, John, 96 ; quoted, on predesti- 
nation, 1 19. 

Calvinism, 06, 226. 

Carlyle, quoted, on religion, 53. 

Caterpillars, metamorphosis of, 181- 

i-i. 216, MA 

Cathari, their belief in preexistence, 

219. 
CauRo and effect, relation of, ingrained 

in all minda, 68-71 ; certain workings 

of, 169, 234, 238. 



Century Dictionary's definition of re- 
ligion, 50. 

Chance, 173. 

Character building, slow, 121 ; impor- 
tance of, 123, 152 ; possibilities of, 
200-203, 208-210 ; means of, 244. 

Chhandogya - upanishad, quotation 
from, on the existent and the non-ex- 
istent, 287. 

Chinese, their repudiation of the ma- 
terialism of Confucius, 64 ; their reli- 
gion spiritualistic, 64 ; have no word 
for creation, in the theological sense, 
186. 

Christianity, 49, 60, 64 ; its claim to be 
the highest theistic conception, 73 ; 
its creeds, 120. 

Christians, their conflicting views of 
religious truth, 49. 

Chrysalis, 181,245. 

Clark, W. N., reference to his theolog- 
ical writings, 218. 

Clarke, James Freeman, quoted, on 
metempsychosis, 301. 

Cleopatra, Story's, quotation from, 
307. 

Clodd, Edward, quoted, 85. 

Cloud, The, Shelley's, quotation from, 
304. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, quotation 
from his On a Homeward Journey ', 
306. 

Columbus, Christopher, 46. 

Compensation, 71 ; universal, 171-175. 
See also Justice. 

Compensation, Emerson's, quotation 
from, 193. 

Competition, 163. 

Comte's definition of religion, 52. 

Conformity, vital in theology, 120. 

Confucius, 64, 156. 

Consequences, doctrine of. See Retri- 
bution. 

Cosmic Philosophy, Fiske's, quotation 
from, 118. 

Cosmic process, its relation to moral 
ends, 122. 

Council of Constantinople, its action on 
the theory of preexistence, 219. 

Cousin, Victor, quoted, on justice, 79. 

Creation, theological theory of. See 
Creationism. 

Creationism, theory of, 12 ; Bible texts 
bearing on the subject, 13-15; de- 
stroys personal responsibility and 



INDEX 



313 



moral distinctions, 17-24 ; is at vari- 
ance with science, 25-28 ; agrees with 
fatalism, 34, 106, 137 ; is contradicted 
by instinct, 153-157, 186 ; explains 
nothing and confuses everything, 187, 
191 ; various theories of creation, 217- 
220 ; creationism makes God guilty 
of wrong, 231 ; destroys freedom, 248, 
260-262, 272 ; opinions concerning, 
quoted and discussed, 276-284 ; quo- 
tations opposing the theories of, 291- 
295. 

Creative Force, 7, 23. 

Creeds, 120, 121. 

Criminal, The, Drachms's, quotation 
from, 137. 

Criminals, treatment of, 114 ; physical 
characteristics of, 136 ; transmission 
of character, as illustrated in the 
Juke family, 136 ; discussion of their 
responsibility, 137-141. 

Creature, meaning of the word, 22, 
23. 

Criticism, invited on first draft of The 
Actual Meaning of Religion, 215, 
216 ; responses, quoted and dis- 
cussed., 217-284. 

Crookes, Sir William, a believer in com- 
munication with disembodied spirits, 
270. 

D'Alviella. See Goblet d'Alviella, 

Eugene, Comte. 
Damnation, based upon moral account- 
ability, 71. 
Daniel iv. 34, 35, quoted, 14. 
Darwin, Charles R., his scientific work, 

5 ; his definition of religion, 52 ; 

quoted, on instinct, 154. 
Be Profundis, Tennyson's, quotation 

from, 303, 304. 
Death, 269, 293. 
Delaware Indian's prayer, 222. 
Democritus, quoted, on creation and 

annihilation, 294. 
Denslow, Van Buren, quoted, on moral 

law, 131-135. 
Descartes, quoted, on predestination, 

97, 98. 
Descent of Man, Darwin's, quotation 

from, 5. 
Devils, gross descriptions of, 85. 
Devolution, as much a law of nature as 

evolution, 201, 204 ; does it result 

in annihilation ? 241, 242. 



D'Holbach. See Holbach, Paul H. T., 
Baron d'. 

D' Israeli, Isaac, quoted, on metempsy- 
chosis, 300. 

Diderot, 96 ; quoted, on necessity, 112, 
119. 

Discussions on Philosophy, Hamilton's, 
quotation from, 98. 

Divine order. See Order. 

Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity 
Illustrated, Priestley's, quotation 
from, 112, 113. 

Drachms, A., quoted, on the Juke 
family, 136. 

Drummond, Henry, on sacrifice, 226. 

Dry den, John, quotation from his trans- 
lation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 305. 

Dualism, theory of, 193, 194, 205, 206. 

Dugdale, Richard L., his account of the 
Juke family, 136. 

DuPrel, Carl, quoted, on the simpli- 
city of nature, 177 ; on the universe, 
289 ; on transformation in nature, 
294. 

Ecclesiastes i. 9, quoted, 293. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 96; difficulties of 
his position on moral accountability, 
118, 119. 

Elements of Ethics, Hyslop's, quotation 
from, 103. 

Elijah, the prophet, 61. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 146, 167 ; quo- 
tation from Brahma, 168 ; quoted, 
on dualism, 193 ; on the soul, 295, 
296. 

Empedocles, quoted, on the eternal ex- 
istence of the universe, 291 ; on crea- 
tion and annihilation, 294. 

Ephesians i. 11 ; ii, 8, 9, quoted, 13, 
14. 

Epicurus, his conception of the chief 
end of life, 121. 

Equilibrium in nature, 48, 82, 171, 172, 
175. 

Erdmann, J. E., quoted, on conditions 
of philosophical thought, 150. 

Essay on Hume, Huxley's, quotation 
from, 103. 

Essays upon Some Controverted Ques- 
tions, quoted, 25. 

Eternal justice. See Justice. 

Eternal order. See Order. 

Eternal Power, 176. 

Eternalism, fundamental principles of, 



\ 



314 



INDEX 



28, 29 ; in antiposition to fatalism, 
35, 36, 106, 107 ; reasonableness of, 
187-189, 191, 192 ; a gospel of hope, 
206 ; affords highest incentive to right 
living, 210 ; a faith based on reason, 
211 ; differs from Buddhism, 238, 
239 ; teaches that man's destiny is 
controlled by himself, 241 ; a criti- 
cism of, 269; fundamental proposi- 
tions of, stated and supported by 
quotations from many authors, 287- 
309. 

Ethical ideal, Huxley's, 53, 81. 

Ethics, Herbert Spencer's, quotations 
from, 113, 130, 186, 187. 

Eureka, Poe's, quotation from, 197, 
198. 

Evelyn Hope, Browning's, quotation 
from, 306. 

Everlasting Reality of Religion, The, 
Fiske's, quoted, 63. 

Evil, explicable under theory of eter- 
nalism, 30-33 ; a half truth, 205, 
206. 

Evolution, development of the theory 
of, 4, 5 ; working of, in religion, 60, 
61, 72, 73 ; support of the theory, 
186 ; a half truth, 204 ; narrowly in- 
terpreted by some, 243 ; repugnant 
to many, 251 ; the result of aspira- 
tion and not yet complete, 253-255. 

Evolution of Religion, Caird's, quoted, 
61. 

Evolution of the Idea of God, Grant 
Allen's, quoted, 62, 63. 

Experience, moral results of, 91 ; prob- 
lems must be solved by, 268. 

Faith, 19, 72, 74 ; stress laid upon in 
creeds, 120, 121. 

Fatalism, doctrine of, 9-11, 12, 10 ; re- 
volt of justice against, 17, 19, 35, 
01 ; its oneness with predestination, 
96-119; Its logic, 126, 142-144; fatal- 
ism belittle! man and slanders God, 
1 16 1 18 ; fctoulleM dogma, b~>'2 ; con- 
tradicted by instinct. 168-167, ISO; 
a doctrine of control from without, 
•J 11 ; defense of, '2~*\-'2'>X ; completely 
accepted by some creationists, but 
• ally denied by Othei 

corollary of oraationiam, 272, 

'■'" Free-will, Necessity, 

Hon. 

', quotation from, 304. 



Fetishes, 68, 71, 72, 84. 

Feuerbach, Ludwig, quoted, 177. 

Fichte's definition of religion, 51, 52. 

Fijians, their idea of immortality, 61, 
62. 

Final Cause, 176. 

First Principles, Spencer's, quotations 
from, 55, 129, 130, 185. 

Fiske, John, quoted, on belief in a 
ghost world, 63 ; on free-will, 118. 

Force and Matter, Buchner's, quota- 
tions from, 103, 137. 

Force, Creative. See Creative Force. 

Forgiveness, 227, 228, 232. 

Fortune, good and adverse, results of, 
32,33. 

Frank, Sebastian, quoted, on eternal 
existence of matter, 293. 

Free-will, 95-119, 248, 258, 269, 275- 
283. 

Free-will and Fatalisni, Schopen- 
hauer's, quotation from, 104. 

Froude, J. A., quoted, on religion, 54 ; 
on free-will, 95 ; his acceptance of 
fatalism, 96. 

Future life. See Immortality of the 
soul. 

Genesis ii. 7, quoted, 13. 

Geology, 186. 

Goblet d'Alviella, Eugene, Comte, his 
definition of religion, 54 ; quoted, on 
early religious rites, 63 ; on belief in 
judgment of the dead, 67, 68, 71. 

God, as Creator, 12, 16-24; belief in, 
72-74 ; Martineau's characterization 
of, as everlasting, 82 ; progressive con- 
ceptions of, 84-86 ; fatalism a slander 
upon God, 147, 148 ; human qualities 
attributed to him, 228-233 ; later con- 
ceptions broadening, 2.'53-'233 ; always 
the power that rights things, 240; 
theories that make God responsible 
for evil, 282, 2S3. 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 146; 
quoted, on the simplicity of truth, 
177 ; quotation from Faust, 304. 

Golden Rule, 41 ; the perfect law of 
justice, 78. 

Gtorgiaa, on morality, 121. 

Gravitation, 82. 

Grot ins, Hugo, as a teacher of morality, 
269. 

Grove, Sir William R., quoted, on the 
universe, 289. 



INDEX 



315 



Gruppe, Otto Friedrich, his definition 
of religion, 53. 

Chiesses at the Riddle of Existence, 
Gold win Smith's, quotation from, 
125-128. 

Guinea negroes, their idea of immortal- 
ity, 62. 

Guyau, M., quoted, on evolution, 253, 
254. 

Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich, 96 ; quoted, 
on free-will, 100 ; on duty, 121 ; on 
the moral order, 131, 135; on the 
universe, 288 ; on creation and anni- 
hilation, 292. 

Hamilton, Sir William, quoted, on free- 
will, 98 ; on instinct, 154 ; on crea- 
tion, 288. 

Hartley, David, on the moral sense, 
121. 

Hartmann, Eduard von, quoted, on 
transmigration, 300. 

Hayne, Paul H., quotation from his 
Preexistence, 307. 

Hazard, no such thing as, in a deep 
sense, 31. 

Heaven, its true nature, 40, 41 ; its re- 
lation to the doctrine of accountabil- 
ity, 71, 74-76 ; primitive conceptions 
of, 85. 

Hebrews. See Jews. 

Hecuba, 143. 

Hedonism, 122, 259. 

Hegel, his definition of religion, 53 •, as 
a moralist, 259. 

Helen, 143. 

Hell, its true nature, 40 ; its relation 
to the doctrine of accountability, 71, 
74-76 ; primitive conceptions of, 85. 

Helvetius, on virtue, 121. 

Heraklitus of Ephesus, quoted, on the 
universe, 289. 

Heredity, law of, 6, 7 ; asserted in Sec- 
ond Commandment, 12 ; an illustra- 
tion of the justice of the natural or- 
der, 34, 35, 163; problems of, 247, 
269, 279. 

Heroism, 209. 

Hibbert Lectures, quoted, 63, 67, 68, 
71. 

Hippias, on morality, 121. 

History of Civilization, Buckle's, quo- 
tation from, 100. 

History of Philosophy, Erdmann's, 
quotation from, 150. 



History of Philosophy, Windelband's, 
quotation from, 150. 

History of the Doctrine of Sin, Muller's, 
reference to, 218. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 96 ; quoted, on neces- 
sity, 114-116; criticism on his posi- 
tion, 118, 119 ; his conception of right 
and wrong, 121. 

Holbach, Paul H. T., Baron d\ 96; 
quoted, on the eternal existence of 
the universe, 290, 291. 

Hugo, Victor, quotation from his To 
the Invisible One, 305. 

Hume, David, 96 ; quoted, on neces- 
sity, 99 ; on virtue, 121. 

Hutcheson, Francis, as a moralist, 259. 

Huxley, T. H., quoted, on the eternity 
of the universe, 25, 26 ; his definition 
of religion, 53 ; quoted, on belief in 
ghosts, 63 ; his acceptance of fatal- 
ism, 96; quoted, on free-will, 102, 
103 ; on necessity, 116, 117 ; criticism 
of his position, 118, 119 ; his views 
on morality, 122, 135 ; quoted, on 
difference of endowment, 136 ; on 
transmigration, 183 ; on condition of 
the universe in earlier ages, 288. 

Hymn of the Conquered, Story's, quo- 
tation from, 45, 46. 

Hyslop, James H., quoted, on necessity, 
103 ; a believer in communication 
with disembodied spirits, 270. 

Ideal Object, Mill's, 53, 81. 

Idols, use of, in religion, 68, 71, 72, 84. 

Immortality of the soul, 3, 4, 12, 27-29, 
35 ; only basis for faith in the comple- 
tion of justice, 48, 75 ; universality 
and permanence of belief in survival 
of the soul, 60-66 ; reasons for this, 
74-77 ; belief supported by metamor- 
phosis in animal life, 182-184 ; char- 
acter of the future life, 192-195 ; it 
will right all wrongs, 207-211 ; low 
as well as high souls immortal, 242 ; 
complete conscious immortality a 
thing to be earned, 252 ; evidence 
concerning the future life, 269-272. 
See also After-existence, Preex- 
istence, Soul. 

Indestructibility of matter, 185. 

Individual, The, by N. S. Shaler, quo- 
tation from, 185. 

Ingersoll, Robert G., supported fatal- 
ism, 96; quoted, on beginning and 



316 



INDEX 



end, 288 ; on non-creation and trans- 
formation in nature, 292. 

Injustice. See Justice. 

Instinct, workings of, in religion, 64-G6, 
75, 82, 83 ; infallibility of, 153, 154 ; 
its denial of creationism, 155-157, 
186, 262 ; its belief in justice, 176 ; 
the source of faith, 223 ; teaches im- 
mortality, 271. 

" Intellectual emperor of Europe," Vol- 
taire so called, 144. 

Irreligion, 82. 

Isaiah xlv. 5, 7, quoted, 13. 

James, Professor, story quoted from, 
217, 218 ; a believer in communication 
with disembodied spirits, 270. 

James i. 27, quoted, 51. 

Jehovah, 84. 

Jerome, reference to his theory of 
creation, 218. 

Jews, 49 ; their belief in spirits, 61 ; in 
immortality, 64, 65, 156 ; their creeds, 
120. 

Johnson, E. H., reference to his theo- 
logical writings, 218. 

Johnson, Samuel, quoted, on free-will, 
96. 

Judgment. See Retribution. 

Juke family, 136. 

Justice, 7, 11, 23 ; its inexorableness, 
37, 38 ; apparent lack of, 45-48 ; the- 
ory of, in Buddhism, 66 ; attainable 
only through immortality, 75, 76; 
justice the heart of all religion, 77- 
79 ; instinctive belief of man in, 83, 
90 ; Hume's view of, 121 ; justice im- 
possible in materialism, 124, 125 ; 
universal in nature, 161-165 ; inevi- 
table though delayed, 166-170; essen- 
tial to continuance of society, 171, 
174 ; the ultimate fact of the uni- 
verse, 175-177 ; demands an eternally 
existing soul, 192 ; is enthroned by 
the philosophy of eternalism, 211 ; 
ObjeotiOIII by critics to views of jus- 



"•'1 . 997 



tire presented in this book, 

.Mi, 248, 247, 268; rapliei to 
these objectkme, 228-286; 288, 24&- 

244, 1\~ \ justice impossible under 

theory of oreationlem, 277, 2£ 
Bebballete, Hebrew, their belief in 
I . Lord, sup Ism, 96. 



Kamschatkans, their idea of justice in 
the future world, 280, 281. 

Kant, Immanuel, his definition of reli- 
gion, 52 ; quoted, on immortality, 66 ; 
on justice, 78, 79 ; on necessity, 97 ; 
as a teacher of morality, 259. 

Kidd, Benjamin, quoted, on religion, 
49, 50, 54. • 

Kipling, Rudyard, quotation from his 
The Neolithic Age, 306. 

Klein, G. J., quoted, on the immensity 
of the universe, 290. 

Knight, William, quoted, on preexist- 
ence, 300. 

Knowledge, limitations of, and persist- 
ent desire for, 3, 4. 

Laplace, supported fatalism, 96. 

Law, William, quoted, on eternal exist- 
ence of the soul, 296. 

Law, accountability to, and universal 
execution of, 236-238. 

Lay Sermons and Addresses, Huxley's, 
quoted, 63. 

Leaves of Grass, Whitman's, quotation 
from, 305. 

Leibnitz, supported fatalism, 96. 

Lessing, G. E., quoted, on transmigra- 
tion, 302, 303. 

Lexicographers, their treatment of the 
word religion, 49. 

Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, quoted, 
on preexistence, 301. 

Liebig, Baron, quoted, 294. 

Life, origin of, 268. 

Light of Asia, quotation from, 307, 
308. 

Light of Day, The, Burroughs's, quota- 
tion from, 142. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 47, 146. 

Locke, John, quoted, on free-will, 96, 
i>7 ; difficulties of his position. 118, 
119; his view of moral obligation, 
121. 

Lombroso, quoted, on criminals, 136. 

Longfellow, H. W., quotation from 

his Rain in (Stammer, :'>04, 305. 
Love, element of, in religion, 226-229, 

281 288. 
Lowell, James Russell, quotation from 

his The TwUighty 906, B07. 
LabbOCk, Sir John, quoted, on insect 

metemorphoeie, 181 
Luther, Martin, supported fatalism, 



INDEX 



317 



Lying, Van Buren Denslow on, 131, 
132. 

Macaulay, T. B. s quoted, 22. 

MacDonald, George, quoted, on relig- 
ion, 54 ; on limitations of the present 
life, 299. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, quoted, on 
character of the Deity, and of cre- 
ated beings, 102. 

Mahabharata, quotation from (Mil- 
man's translation), 308, 309. 

Maimonides, 65. 

Man, the noblest object in the world, 
39, 40 ; comparison of, with other ani- 
mals, 204-206. 

Mandeville, his conception of virtue, 
121. 

Marquesas Islanders, their idea of im- 
mortality, 61. 

Martineau, James, his definition of re- 
ligion, 54, 81 ; as a moralist, 259. 

Materialism, statement of the theory of, 
6-8 ; its identity with fatalism, 9-11 ; 
its relation to the theological theory 
of creation, 12, 20, 23 ; its explanation 
of the common belief in a future life, 
74, 75 ; its contrast with religion, 89- 
91 ; its spread in late years among 
scientists, 124 : its theories irrational, 
173 ; contradicted by the metamor- 
phosis of animal life, 181, 182 ; essen- 
tial doctrine of, 191 ; can offer no the- 
ory of infinite justice, 283, 284. 

Matthew x. 29-31, quoted, 15. 

Maxwell, C, quoted, on the indestructi- 
bility of matter, 292. 

Memory of previous existence, 196-198, 
250-252. 

Mercy, element of, in religion, 227- 
233. 

Metamorphosis, in animal life, 181- 
184. 

Metempsychosis, The, Aldrich's, quota- 
tion from, 305. 

Metempsychosis of the Pine, Taylor's, 
quotation from, 304. 

Meyer, W., quoted, on the immensity 
of the universe, 290. 

Micah vi. 8, quoted, 51. 

Mill, John Stuart, his definition of re- 
ligion, 53 ; his acceptance of fatalism. 
96 ; his definition of a necessitarian, 
100. 

" Minute philosophers," 97. 



Misfortune, 207, 208. 

Modern Thinkers, Van Buren Dens- 
low's, quotation from, 131-135. 

Mohammedans, 49 ; their belief in the 
survival of the soul, 64 ; their creeds 
120. 

Mohr, F., quoted, on creation and an- 
nihilation, 291, 292. 

Moleschott, supported fatalism, 96. 

Monism, 176, 177. 

Monotheism, 72. 

Morality, its relations to justice and to 
religion, 78-80, 119 ; secondary in 
theology, 120 ; various conceptions 
of, 121-123'; materialism and moral- 
ity, 124-135; Socrates and other 
teachers of morality, 259. See also 
Accountability, moral. 

Morison, Cotter, on moral responsibil- 
ity, 127, 128. 

Motion, perpetual, 172, 173. 

Muller, Julius, reference to his History 
of the Doctrine of Sin, 218 ; his be- 
lief in preexistence, 219. 

Muller, Max, his definition of religion, 
52 ; universality of religion, 56 ; 
quoted, on scientific and philosoph- 
ical conditions, 150. 

Mystery, absolute, Herbert Spencer's 
definition of religion, 51, 81. 

Mystery, A, Whittier's, quotation from, 
304. 

Myth and Science, Vignoli's, quoted, 56. 

Mythical beliefs, 56. 

Myths and Dreams, Clodd's, quoted, 85. 

Naturalism, its conflict with super- 
naturalism, 72, 73 ; its relation to tra- 
ducianism, 219. 

Nature, as creator, 7, 12 ; justice of, 
29 ; order of, 70. 

Necessity, 35, 36 ; agreement of the 
philosophical doctrine of necessity 
with predestination and fatalism, 96 ; 
discussion of, 97-119, 130 ; enslaving 
effect of, 145-147 ; lack of convincing 
power, 148 ; relations to justice, 242, 
243; 269. See also Fatalism, Pre- 
destination. 

Neolithic Age, The, Kipling's, quotation 
from, 306. 

Newman, F. W., quoted, on eternal 
existence of God, 217. 

Nicaiaguans, their idea of immortality, 
62. 



318 



INDEX 



Nirvana, doctrine of, 60, 65, 238. 
Non-religious tribes, 56. 

Obligation, moral. See Accountability, 
moral. 

Obry, Jean B. F., quoted, on metem- 
psychosis, 302. 

Ode on Intimations of Immortality, 
Wordsworth's, quotation from, 303. 

Old Revelation. See Old Testament. 

Old Testament, its materialism repudi- 
ated by modern Hebrews, 64. 

Omnipotence, 177, 241. 

Omnipresence, 177, 241. 

On a Homeward Journey, Coleridge's, 
quotation from, 306. 

On Human Nature, Schopenhauer's, 
quotation from, 204. 

One Principle, of monism, 176. 

Optimism, a partial view, 205, 206. 

Order, eternal, 7, 11 ; justice of, 29, 38 ; 
natural order, 70 ; divine and natural 
order identical, 73 ; moral order, 77, 
79 ; the eternal order moral and just, 
89, 90, 231, 234, 235, 244, 245. 

O'Reilly, John Boyle, quoted, on com- 
pensation, 1G7. 

Organizations, religious. See Religious 
organizations. 

Origeu, his belief in preexistence, 219. 

Osiris, 84. 

Outlines of the History of Religion, 
Tiele's, quoted, 56. 

Overruling Power, 50, 81, 85. 

Ovid, quotation from the Metamor- 
]j/ioses, 305. 

Owen, Robert, quoted, on necessity, 
104. 

Owenites, 114. 

Oxford Address, 1893, Huxley's, quota- 
tion from, 122. 

Paine, Thomas, quoted, on religion, 

52. 
Paley, William, 128. 

I*a)>u;ui [slander's prayer, 222. 

m, Blaise, quoted, on the universe, 
290. 
Paul, Baint, quoted, 100, 119. 

. John Boyle O'Reilly's, 
quotation from, 167. 

008 to his theory of 

Petal] 

I partial view, 205, 206. 



Pharisees, 95. 

Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire's, 
quotations from, 101, 116, 142, 143. 

Philosophy, its failure, 149-152 ; its 
difficulties due to false premises, 
261-262. 

Plato, 10 ; quoted, on justice, 79 ; as a 
teacher of morality, 259 ; his belief 
in the immortality of the soul, 260. 

Poe, Edgar A., quoted, on memories of 
previous existence, 197, 198. 

Poets, as teachers, compared with the 
philosophers, 262, 263. 

Polytheism, 72. 

Predestination, doctrine of, 16, 17, 95- 
119. See also Fatalism, Free-will, 
Necessity. 

Preexistence, 31, 34 ; its place in Bud- 
dhistic doctrine, 66 ; explains mys- 
tery of life, 168 ; belief in, supported 
by metamorphosis in animal life, 183, 
184 ; is eternal, 191 ; memory of, 
196-198, 250-252 ; belief in, in early 
times, 219 ; example of, in the butter- 
fly and caterpillar, 246 ; believed in 
by Socrates and Plato, 260. 

Preexistence, Hayne's, quotation from, 
307. 

Price, Richard, as a moralist, 259. 

Priestley, Joseph, 96 ; quoted, on ne- 
cessity, 112, 113, 119. 

Primitive Culture, Tylor's, quoted, 56, 
57, 62, 67. 

Primitive races, religious beliefs and 
customs of, 61-64, C>7-70. 72, 84-86. 

Principle* of Human Knnulcdge, Ba- 
con's, quotation from, 103. 

Propitiation, 68. 

Protagoras denies natural morality, 
121. 

Proverbs xvi. 4 ; xv. 3, quoted, 13. 

Psalm cxxxv. 6 ; xciv. 8-11, quoted, 15. 

Psychical research, results of, 268. 

Psychology % Spencer's, quotation from, 

100. 
Punishment. S<> Retribution. 
Pupa. See Chrysalis. 

Raki tn Summer, Longfellow's, quota- 
tion from, 904, 306, 

Ratsel, Priedrich, 68. 

u« luiimir, bin experiments with the 
pupa of the caterpillar, 182. 

Reciprocity. 8ee Compensation. 

lleid, Thomas, as a moralist, 259. 



INDEX 



319 



Reincarnation. See Transmigration. 

Religion, 45, 48 ; lack of clear defini- 
tion, and confusion with theology, 
49 ; definitions and characterizations 
of, quoted, 50-54 ; essentials and 
non-essentials of, 55 ; universality, 
harmony, and antiquity of, 57 ; 
abuses of, 57, 58 ; its actual meaning 
to be sought in its permanent man- 
ifestations, in instinctive and un- 
taught beliefs, and in the harmony 
of belief in religious organizations, 
58, 59 ; religious institutions and be- 
liefs product of evolution, GO, 61 ; 
Tylor's minimum definition of reli- 
gion, 62 ; instinctive religion insists 
on immortality, 64-66 ; religion sy- 
nonymous with eternal justice, 77- 
79 ; natural as flowers and sunrise, 
78 ; requires no pomp, pageantry, or 
ceremonies, is innocent of wars and 
persecutions, is the moral order of 
the universe, 83 ; conceptions of, con- 
stantly broadening, 86, 87 ; must be 
studied in the scientific spirit, 88 ; 
contrast it offers to materialism, 89- 
91 ; origin of religious beliefs, 221, 
222 ; perversions of religion, 224, 
225 ; love and mercy in religion, 226, 
227 ; varying conceptions of religion, 
240 ; religion natural, 267. 

Religions of Primitive Peoples, Brin- 
ton's, quoted, 63. 

Religious organizations, 58. 

Renan, Ernest, quoted, on justice, 222, 
223. 

Repentance, 19 ; stress laid upon, in 
creeds, 120, 121. 

Retribution, development of doctrine 
of, 67, 71, 75, 76 ; effect of, 113 ; ad- 
verse fortune not always retributive, 
199. 

Reward and punishment. See Retri- 
bution. 

Riddle of the Universe, Haeckel's, quo- 
tations from, 100, 131. 

Right and wrong, issue between, 83. 

Rightness. See Justice. 

Ripon, Bishop of, quoted, 244, 267. 

Rites, forms, etc., 120. 

Roman Catholic Church, its teachings 
on the creation, 218. 

Romans ix. 11, 13, 15, 16, 18; viii. 30; 
ix. 21, 22 ; xi. 7, quoted, 13-15. 

Romany, quoted, 28. 



Rossmaessler, Emil A., quoted, oneter- 
nalism of matter, 293. 

Rot he, Richard, his disbelief in crea- 
tion, 219. 

Riickert, Friedrich, quoted, on the 
universe, 290. 

Sacrifice, idea of, in religion, 227. 

Sadducees, 95. 

St. John, James A., quoted, on neces- 
sity, 114-116. 

Salvation, not easy, 36 ; its relation to 
the doctrine of accountability, 71 ; 
salvation by faith and repentance, 
120, 121. 

Samuel, the prophet, 61. 

Sarpedon, 142, 143. 

Saul, King, 61. 

Schopenhauer, quoted, on predestina- 
tion and fatalism, 95, 96 ; on free- 
will, 104, 112 ; 119 ; on philosophy, 
150 ; 186 ; on man, 204 ; on metem- 
psychosis, 301, 302. 

Schubert, J. E. von, quoted, on preex- 
istence, 296. 

Schurtz, Heinrich, 68. 

Science, and moral questions, 124, 125 ; 
science reveals divine order, 234 ; 
should be able to cope with question 
of immortality, 271, 272. 

Science of Ethics, Leslie Stephens's, 
quotation from, 128, 129. 

Scotus Erigena, his belief in preexist- 
ence, 219. 

Secchi, P. A., quoted, on the immensity 
of the universe, 290 ; on the conser- 
vation of matter, force, etc., 294. 

Seeley, J. R., quoted, on religion, 53. 

Shakespeare, 47, 146. 

Shaler, N. S., quoted, on scientific in- 
quiry, 185. 

Shelley, Percy B., quotation from The 
Cloud, 304. 

Short Studies, Froude's, quotation 
from, 100. 

Sin, 276. 

Slavery, 162. 

Smith, Gold win, quoted, on the prin- 
ciples of morality, 125-128. 

Social Evolution, quotation from, 49, 
50. 

Sociology, Herbert Spencer's, quoted, 
63, 64. 

Socrates, his belief in immortality, 67 ; 
his teachings on morality, 259 ; on 



320 



INDEX 



the immortality of the soul, 260 ; on 
communication with disembodied 
spirits, 270 ; on preexistence of the 
soul, 296. 

Soul, definition of, 248, 249 ; quotations 
concerning, 295-309. See also Im- 
mortality of the soul. 

Spencer, Herbert, quoted, on the per- 
manence of matter, 26 ; on religion, 
51, 55, 56, 58 ; on the conception of 
the soul's survival of physical death, 
63, 64 ; his acceptance of fatalism, 
96 ; quoted, on free-will, 100 ; on 
moral obligation, 113, 121, 122 ; his 
Hedonism, 122, 130 ; quoted, on the 
working of the Unknown Cause, 129, 
130 ; on motives of action, 130 ; on 
distinctions of good and bad, 131 ; on 
reading of metaphysics, 150 ; the 
"Unknowable," 176; quoted, on 
metamorphosis, 183, 184 ; on inde- 
structibility of matter, 185 ; on per- 
sistence of traditional forms of 
thought, 186, 187; on the universe, 
288 ; on creation and annihilation, 
291. 

Spiller, Philipp, quoted, on creation 
and annihilation, 291. 

Spinoza, his definition of religion, 52 ; 
supports fatalism, 96 ; on man's des- 
tiny, 100 ; quoted, on punishment, 
113. 

Spirit land, universal belief in, 192; 
character of, 193-195. 

Spirits, disembodied, their communica- 
tion with man, 270. 

Standard Dictionary's definition of re- 
ligion, 51. 

Stealing, Van Buren Denslow on, 132- 
134. 

Stephen, Leslie, quoted, on virtue and 
happiness, 128, 129. 

Stewart, B., quoted, on indestructibil- 
ity of matter, 298. 

Btewart, Dngald, quoted, on predesti- 

QStion an<l free-will, 1)5, 90, 102. 

Bteyne, BCarquii of, 127. 
stoics, as moralist*, 269. 

W. W., quotation from bis Hymn 

of thr Cn/o/u, rrtl, 15, 46 ; from ( '!<<>- 

pii />■<!, 807. 

Strong, A H.. reference to his theolog- 
ical writings, 218, 

Superhuman powers, belief in, 70-73 ; 

significance of, si, 239, 210. 



Supernatural Being, 51, 81. 

Supernaturalism, its conflict with natu- 
ralism, 72, 73, 86, 231-233, 266, 267. 

Superstition, developed in the name of 
religion, 57 ; inherited from ances- 
tors, 82. 

Swedenborg, quoted, on religion, 51 ; a 
witness of communication with dis- 
embodied spirits, 270. 

Taylor, Bayard, quotation from The 
Metempsychosis of the Pine, 304. 

Teleology, 176. 

Telesius, Bernard, quoted, on inde- 
structibility of matter, 293. 

Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, on the uni- 
verse, 203 ; quotation from his Be 
Profundis, 303, 304. 

Theology, its theory concerning the 
soul, 12 ; its relation to materialism, 
20 ; to justice, 23 ; lack of distinction 
between theology and religion, 49; 
inheritance from earlier ages, 85 ; its 
insistence on belief and conformity, 
120; its concessions, 125; its weak- 
ness and decay, 149-152 ; founded on 
myths, 191 ; holds to a divine system 
which is imperfect, 234 ; its relations 
with philosophy, 261, 262. 

Thrasymachus, on morality, 121. 

Tiele, Cornelius P., quoted, on the uni- 
versality of religion, 56. 

Tientsin, references to, 139, 140. 

Timothy i. 9, quoted, 14. 

To an Astrologer, E. W, Wilcox's, quo- 
tation from, 307. 

To the Invisible One, Hugo's, quotation 
from, 305. 

Tonga Islanders, their idea of immor- 
tality, 61. 

Torquemada, 106-168. 

Traducianism, tbeory of, 218-220. 

Transformation, the law of nature, 26- 
28; quotations concerning. 291-296. 

Transmigration, rationality of, 18:? ; va- 
rious theories of, 190-196, 244, 215 ; 
lack of consciousness of previous 
states, 250, 251 ; quotations touching 
uih)!!, 296-809. 

Twilight, The, Lowell's, quotation from, 
806, 307. 

Tylor, Edward B., quoted, on the uni- 
versality of religion, 66-68 ; bis min- 
imum definition of religion, 02 ; 
quoted, on primitive beliefs in retri- 



INDEX 



321 



button, 67 ; his doctrine of animism, 
270. 
Tyndall, John, quoted, on annihilation, 
294, 295. 

Unbelievers, their respect for religious 

sentiment, 55. 
Unchastity, Van Buren Denslow on, 

134. 
Universe, extent of, in time and space, 

quotations concerning, 287-291. 
Unknown Cause, 130. 
" Unknown, The," of the agnostic, 176. 

Vaihinger, Dr., quoted, on German 
philosophy, 150. 

Vignoli, Tito, quoted, on the universal- 
ity of religion, 56. 

Vogt, Carl, quoted, on creation and an- 
nihilation, 291. 

Voltaire, 96, 97 ; quoted, on free-will 
and necessity, 101, 108, 114, 116; 
criticism of his position, 118, 119 ; 
quoted, on the dependence of events 
as illustrated in life and death of 
Sarpedon, 142, 143; criticism of his 
theory, 143, 144 ; quoted, on eternal 
existence of the world, 289 ; on pre- 
existence of the soul, 301. 



Wallace, Alfred Russel, a believer 
in communication with disembodied 
spirits, 270. 

Webster's definition of religion quoted, 
50. 

Westminster Confession of Faith, quo- 
tation from, 16, 17. 

Whitman, Walt, quotation from Leaves 
of Grass, 305. 

Whittier, J. G., quotation from A Mys- 
tery, 304. 

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, quotation from 
her To an Astrologer, 307. 

Windelband, Wilhelm, quoted, on con- 
ditions of metaphysical thought, 150. 

Woden, 84. 

Wolofs, proverb of, 281. 

Worcester's definition of religion, 51. 

Wordsworth, William, quotation from 
his Ode on Intimations of Immor- 
tality, 303. 

Wrong, issue between it and right, 83. 

Worship, many objects of, 72. 

Wundt, quoted, on instinct, 154. 

Young, Edward, quotation from, on 
change, 308. 

Zeus, 84. 



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